


Left to Burn

by Crisppacks



Category: Avatar: Legend of Korra, Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Airbending & Airbenders, Background Relationships, Canon Compliant, Drama, Earthbending & Earthbenders, F/M, Firebending & Firebenders, Original Character(s), Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Pre-Canon, Worldbuilding
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-16
Updated: 2017-02-14
Packaged: 2018-09-17 23:18:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 16
Words: 30,837
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9350627
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Crisppacks/pseuds/Crisppacks
Summary: In the World of Avatar, there were 112 years where the Avatar was not only unknown but absent; leaving humanity to fend for itself. Min, a non-bender who grew up during the early war helps to fill in the gaps left by history and shines a light on the reality of living through an endless war.Her epistolary account is meant to bring to mind the long tradition of written history in the world of Avatar, and to answer a few questions left by both series and the comics.





	1. Prologue & part 1

**Author's Note:**

> My lonely lamp is not bright, I’d like to end these thoughts;   
> I roll back the hanging, gaze at the moon, and long sigh in vain.  
> The beautiful person's like a flower beyond the edge of the clouds.  
> Above is the black night of heaven's height;  
> Below is the green water billowing on.  
> The sky is long, the road is far, bitter flies my spirit;  
> The spirit I dream can't get through, the mountain pass is hard.  
> Long yearning,  
> Breaks my heart.
> 
> -Li Bai

_"Mom, what’s this?” a young girl with sleek hair lifted up a crate of papers, all with delicate handwriting on sturdy paper. Most looked to be letters._

_A woman with greying hair and tired eyes looked up from her work to the young girl, and she put down her quill for a moment, rolled her wrist, and smiled at the girl._

_“Writings, things we collected from our trip, your brother is helping me organize them,” This led to a very pronounced huff._

_“I still can’t believe you traveled without me,” she pawed over a few of the notes, “You could have just waited until I got back,”_

_“I know sweetheart, but I didn’t want to put you in danger,” Her mother said patiently and the girl padded to her side and leaned against her mother, scanning the words her mother had written. The fine, drying lines were an advanced style which, mere months ago she wouldn’t have recognized._

_“What’s this?” She leaned down, suddenly more interested, and the woman gingerly picked up her pen once more._

_“Just some things I don’t want to forget, here pull up a chair, you can read as I write,”_

_The girl lifted one of the finished pages and frowned._

_“Is this a sad story?”_

_“Parts of it are, yes, but it’s all important,” She told her daughter patiently; she steadied the paper between her paperweights._

_“Why,” the child pestered on and her mother poked the girl’s nose with the dry end of her brush._

_“Because if this hadn’t happened, you and your brother wouldn’t be here,” She then read where she had left off, thought for a moment, and continued to write._

_“Oh, well thanks mom, you spoiled the ending!”_

 

**_I_ **

           You have to understand; I grew up when the Avatar was just a distant memory, a symbol swiftly falling out of modern thought. I was born a few years after his death and would have been around the next avatars’ age but no one knew what exactly happened to him, or her. The previous one however, I learned much about him from those who knew his reign.

           The story of his demise had been well circulated, killed by a volcanic eruption on his home island. He was an average avatar from what my mother told me; a bit preoccupied with the Fire nations wishes of global war. Despite the cause of his death, I, like many others, suspected foul play—The idea the Avatar’s home island just erupted and only a few weeks later Sozin decides to invade Earth Kingdom waters? You don’t need to be a genius to smell the salmon-eel stench of that happenstance.

           So the few memories I have of my early childhood don’t involve that spiritual master in particular. My earliest memories were painted with more orange and yellow than with red and burgundy.

           When I was small, my mother used to take me to trade in the city. In those days, it would be mostly peasants, dirt farmers and wandering merchants looking for a few takers to their wares. We never had much, and what we had we conserved until it broke down, from clothes to farm equipment. The precious little surplus we had, well that’s where the market came in. My mother would carry my brother in a sling on her back and tell me to stay at her side as we pushed trough the crowds, my arms filled with the excess vegetables or bread. These were our bartering chips to the interested takers, few that there were.

            We would walk past the other women with their children selling beans, and rice- we had just enough of our own, and the merchants- we could never afford their luxuries, and the dirt farmers with their grain. In the old days, our destination was always the same, as was the fight to get there.

           Set up in their usual lot were the nomads. Dressed not in greens and greys, but bright oranges, sunny yellows, and rust reds, sometimes with bight sky blue arrows on their temples and arms. They were always smiling as they tried to fairly trade with the cranky women and their screaming babies.  My mother would tell me to watch how they moved, to notice how they looked around at us common folk as equals though they could leap away to their temples like spirits conquering the sky.  She would always be very respectful, bowing even when they told her they were just trying to trade. They sold fruit pies, and they were always the best you’ve ever tasted. I remember begging my plants some nights before market days to grow faster just so we could have something else to trade with, just to taste the pies once more.

           They always accepted vegetables, you see, they were strictly vegetarians and never seemed to shy away from trading their pies for a few more beets, carrots and peas. I remember one woman with dark brown hair cascading into a bun down her back laughing as she took our eggplants and tomatoes in exchange for a fruit pie. She had striking eyes, more brown than grey- an odd trait for an air nomad. She saw me and smiled, not knowing what to do, I hid behind my mother’s skirts. The woman bent and handed me a leechee nut, still smiling at me. I took it and she told me that she had a little boy, perhaps a few years older than me and that he was growing up away from her, she told me seeing other little ones reminded her of his smile. She tucked the eggplants and tomatoes into a basket under their table and winked at me as my mother walked away with our treasure.

           They lived in the sky, just the opposite of the earth benders who would come around on occasion and told us to seek our fates in the land. I always thought they were full of nonsense. The land? The land gave us famine and insects to devour our crops. The land gave some of our people the ability to break and form the rocks of our earth while it left most of us high and dry, seeking sustenance from the nutrient deprived outer skin of the land’s hulking form. Being of the earth meant to be shafted, it meant holding on to everything you were given and making do with what you had.

           The air on the other hand, it was like being spirits among mortals. They could all control the air; they could all depend on the wind to keep them aloft as they sought new heights, new lands, and new futures. They are the people of spirit, grace and freedom. They weren’t stuck to the earth like canyon crawlers clawing through mud.

           I never told my mother how I planned to leave and seek enlightenment in the eastern temple with the women who sold the fruit pies, she would have told me to get my head out of the clouds, but that was precisely the point.

           I decided when I turned sixteen that she couldn’t force me to stay any longer; I would refuse to be just another woman in town with screaming children in the market place. Unfortunately for my daydreams, however, my 16th birthday would come far too late.

           I noticed on market days, the masters- the ones with tattoos- would help the younger girls to create the signature dollop on top of the pie with this grace-filled flick of the wrist. Sometimes I would make mud pies and do the same movement, just silently hoping that some hidden air-bending prowess would reveal itself.  My father was part air nomad, his mother had run away with an earthbender and they two children, and neither were benders. As a result though, my father had grey eyes and lived with the hope that my brother or I would become airbenders. He didn’t live to see my brother fail to airbend so perhaps he died with some unfulfilled hope.

           At the age of ten, my mother sent me into town alone with our basket of kale and rutabagas and I traded a teenage girl for a pie. I looked at her and smiled, she didn’t have her tattoos yet so I knew she wasn’t a master but I watched in awe as she inflated the cream with the spin of her wrist.

           I asked her if she was going to be a master soon and she bashfully replied that she was still a few years off. The line was short so I took my time collecting the pie and watching her as she put away the vegetables. I almost told her my plan but I was still so young and they were still so impressive, I was too shy and I told my self I would always have next time.

           The walk back home was filled with possibilities and I watched the sky as I always did in the old days, waiting for a sky bison to make his way peacefully across the clouds.  I like to imagine that one day, if I were patent, they would glide down on their orange gliders and take me away. I would sit outside after all of my chores were done and wait for a herd to pass by, I would try to see if there were any people like me, a normal citizen just randomly selected to become air nomads and live in the sky. I’m not quite sure what I would have done differently had I known for a fact that I could become an air nomad, perhaps run away?

           Instead, I padded dutifully back to our small cottage, a wooden lodge surrounded by a thicket of trees, to deliver our pie back to my mother. My brother was picking corn in the late summer afternoon sun and waved as soon as he saw me. He ran out to see the pie I got- peach- and to try and steal a dollop of cream.  

“See any bison?” I asked excitedly-it’s our current past time-he smacked his forehead.

“I forgot! I think the piglets are big enough to bring to market though,”

That’s the kind of thing he remembered, his chores. Cho and I shared many things, but priorities were never among them.

When I entered our homestead, mother was looking and fingering though our meager funds. After our father died, we couldn’t use all of our land to it’s full potential, so we were selling it slowly to bigger families.

           She smiled at me when she saw the pie, and insisted we dig into it before dinner. She kissed me on the forehead and took the pie to the kitchen for slicing.

           My mother was always the bravest person I knew, I suppose I tried to follow in her footsteps but, then and even now, I don’t think I ever lived up to her. As she sliced into the pie, she looked out the window and by chance spotted an air bison. She called me over and we watched it as it disappeared into the clouds.

She never told me out right, but I always assumed she wanted to live in the clouds just as much as I did. She spent too much time on the ground though, and her daydreams were too caked with mud to see much more than her small town and my father’s picturesque grey eyes.  

           He had been dead for almost 5 years by the end of that summer and his memory was never particularly revered. There had been a cough; he didn’t make it though the winter. On one morning of the vigil, there was a nock on our door and a weepy looking Air sister came in with a lovely bouquet of white cascading flowers. My mother made tea and the woman told us that our father was her nephew.

My mother and the Elderly sister spoke for a very long time until the sun soaked the horizon in pink. She told us that she would keep our family in her meditations and prayers, and she pulled a small spinner from her vestments and handed it to me as she left, commenting on how I had his eyes

At the table my brother ate with his mouth open and my mother heaped another serving on my plate without me having to ask.

“You need to eat more dear, I swear you never eat enough,”

“I eat plenty,” I complained and continued eating my pie, my brother pointed out of the window.

“There’s one! “

We all looked as a few bison glide past, and my mother released a sigh.

She never told either of us, but I always assumed she liked the pies because they reminded her of dad.

 


	2. Part 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Firenation arrives.

**_II_ **

           I don’t quite remember waking up on the night a few weeks after my last encounter with the pie seller, but I remember the excitement in my little brothers voice as he told me of the spectacle in the sky. I followed him out of our room and we crept past mother’s room to the outside where the sky was glowing red. We crossed our yard glowing red in the light, scurried into our barn and climbed the rickety ladder to the roof. We nestled into the eves and watched the ball glide slowly across the sky. I had never seen anything so beautiful, neither of us, had and my brother asked if I smelled the smoke.

           I told him that that was impossible, the comet didn’t make any smoke, but as soon as he said something, I smelled it too. We worried that our neighbor’s house was burning or the very real possibility of a forest fire, there had been so little rain. But we couldn’t see anything, just the brilliant eye of fire in the sky.

           We left the roof as soon as we saw the sun painting the morning.  My brother was still worried as we walked back and I told him that I was sure the smell would be gone when we had a good nights rest. I hardly noticed the particularly brilliant sunrise.

           News travels quickly in our town however, as we would soon discover, the fire nation travels faster.

           As soon as we left the barn we heard trouble, sounds of a scuffle, a scream and shouts of anger. We had seen fights, but war was a distant concept to us. We were vaguely aware of the avatar, and how he was the one in charge of the world’s peace, but he was dead, the next one hadn’t even been announced yet. Neither of us even considered what was happening as an act war, even as an air nomad leapt frantically though the tree line, her orange robe as brilliant as flame in the morning light.

We ran inside and hid underneath the table, I covered my brother’s ears as we heard the woman scream, but it wasn’t just a woman. I couldn’t understand what was happening but I heard her beg, she screamed not to kill the child. I couldn’t see but the fire was so loud, her screams, so penetrating.

“She can’t be the avatar! She’s too young- stop please oh sprits protect us!”

The whimpers continued, the pleas, the sound of all that fire.

“Please— mercy—“

A few minutes later, there were no noises, no fire and no cries.

Some part of me thought that this could be the end; I suppose I didn’t even consider how true that was.

A man pounded on the door, he called for the occupant and his voice was gruff and surprisingly young. I feared for our lives so I didn’t get up. The door slammed open and a man in black and red armor stood in the doorway, he seemed silhouetted by the red sky.

“I saw this door open, if you don’t want to suffer the same fate of that woman I would suggest you show yourself,”

I covered my brother’s mouth to stifle his whimpers; both of us quivering like leaves. I heard my mother’s door open and the sound of her voice drifted into the room.

“What in the world is going on?”

The firebender’s armor clinked slightly as he moved to an attack position hands poised to punch, my mother yelped.

“Who are you? What are you doing in my home?!”

The firebender shifted slightly, still prepared to attack.

“ I’m under official fire nation orders-“

“This is the earth kingdom,” She hissed “We aren’t fire citizens”

He back-peddled, his stance was as strong as ever, but his voice faltered.

“Where is your husband-“

“Dead, died several years ago, you want to talk to the man of the house you may as well talk to me,”

I had never heard my mother so angry, I feared for her, she had obviously not heard the screams.

“Very well,” The fire bender stood up and started to walk towards her, but ducked to look under the table, as soon as I saw the mask I screamed.

“What are you-“ my mother let out before she heard me. The firebender dove under the table to grab my brother and me.

“Doing- Min! What are you- Let them go! Let go of my children!” She screamed and picked up a vase, dumping the contents of wild flowers and water from its basin.

He looked over both of us- I could just make out his eyes from under the mask; His fiery brown irises darted between us, like he was looking for something.

“Are you air benders?” he shouted over the din my mother was making- neither of us moved.

           My mother threw the vase and it crashed into the side of his helmet, the mask slid down to reveal his shadowy face, he had dark hair and a thin black mustache, his brow was covered in sweat. He glared up to my mother and dropped us, with a casual punch, more fire than I had ever seen exploded from his fist to the direction of my mother. We all screamed and she leaped aside. The inside of our house danced like a bonfire and the fire bender dragged us out of the house to examine us.

The sky was brilliant, the sun dueled the comet for light in the sky, and the fire bender asked us if we were air benders.

My brother replied by vomiting, I on the other hand, fought out of his reach and ran back into the house.

“Mom! Mom I’m coming!” I choked through the inferno but I could hardly see, let alone fight through the fire, behind me the fire bender was rushing toward me. Oh, what I would have given to be a bender, to throw a wall of earth at the man or freeze him with water or- better yet best him with the agility of an air bender. Unfortunately, not only was I small for my age, I was weak for it. The fire bender grabbed me by my dress and threw me into the grass, swearing to kill me if I didn’t tell the truth.

“No I’m not a bender! None of us are, can’t you see that!” I screamed, only distantly aware that I was coughing for breath.

           He stared at me and, maybe it was my naivety of the time, but I swear he looked right at me and whispered he was sorry. Perhaps not sorry, but he must have said something, an insult? A plea? We looked at each other in an odd dynamic of power and age and what I only realize now must have been anger. Mine for my home and mother, his, perhaps for the time he wasted chasing goose-rabbits. The look held something else though, something I’ve never been able to decipher.

All I knew is that he looked at me, then at the house and ran away, back into the trees where he had come from.

           I looked to my brother who was still frozen with fear and in a moment of clarity and stupidity, told him to get Veslio- our ostrich horse, from the barn and some water. I sprinted into the house, not knowing what else to do and looked to see if I could fight my way into it. There was nothing but fire and smoke. I ripped my dress to cover my mouth with cloth and looked around the edges of what was becoming a lit tinderbox. I saw my mother was crawling toward me, she was trying to speak but she couldn’t. I shouted that I would help her, and I believe she screamed for me to leave.

            I knelt down and tried to crawl towards her but the fire leapt out at scorched and my hands and face. I crawled back, inching backwards as my body seemed to burn around me. My mother caught up to me, crawling over me, smothering me with her body and extinguishing the flames. She nearly dragged me out as soon as she had left the inferno, grabbing the water my brother had brought and splashing over the entrance of what had once been our home. 

She held me as soon as I was out, rocking me liked she used to as our house fell slowly behind us. We had to retreat as the flame’s heat started to scorch our skin from afar. We watched as our home was reduced to ashes before us. As soon as she could, my mother jumped on the ostrich horse and told us she would be back with help for me, she told us to stay brave and hide in the barn, which we did. We were silent in the cow pig pin, curled up around each other with the livestock’s nervous squeals around us. She was gone for most of the day; she never even saw the comet disappear across the horizon. We watched, drinking in with awe and rapt anticipation, not knowing that It was what made the day so vile.  The comet had left, but our troubles did not seem to.

When our mother returned she looked like a ghost, and curled up right next to us in the pin, reduced to ashes like the our home, my brother, and me.

“They killed them,” she whispered, her hands covered my heavily burned ones. I whimpered in pain but she seemed frozen even with her scorch marks.

“They killed them all,”

* * *


	3. part 3

**_III_ **

            We travelled together on the back of Veslio to our neighbors’ home, they offered a place to stay as we figured out what to do. I remember how they watched me as my mother helped me down; any movement caused me an immense amount of pain. Our neighbors looked confused, just as stunned as we were of what had happened. As they bandaged my blistering face, they asked about what I had seen.

“Min-yong, why did they attack you, why did they not just leave you alone?”

The wife asked, but words failed me, I couldn’t bear to think about the flames or the screaming, the woman pleading for the life of the child.

They put my mother and me in their daughters room, my brother in their boys room but he wouldn’t leave my mothers side. We slept together, and my mother sang us to sleep.

            A week passed and the smell of the temple remained. No matter whom you asked, anyone in the whole valley said that they couldn’t smell anything but fire for months, but it passed long before then. Our neighbor’s patience ended after a week and we spent all of our money- what we had saved in an earthen vault, repairing what was lost.

            The next time in the village, I looked at the empty lot where the air nomads would have been, lost in the simplicity of the truth. They were dead.

Men like the one who had tried to kill our mother and me murdered all of them, every last one. And they did it for no reason but to start a war. But that was perhaps the greatest reason of all.

 

            War was once a distant concept but in a few short weeks it was all I knew. My neighbor said good-bye to her husband and two sons- the youngest was an earth bender. What remained of our home was seized for land to build a training facility and we were given no stipend.

            We moved into town and my mother became a seamstress, I was her assistant and my brother became an errand boy. She made uniforms and listened to gossip from the warfront, I became lost in the past.

I don’t remember when exactly it hit me that there weren’t any more air nomads, but I remember crying for a good long while- and I never cried.I was angry, we were all angry back then, not just jaded to war like we all soon became.

 I remember sitting outside one afternoon listening to a couple of men playing pai sho and how they said that the air nomads had no military, had no attack force even.

“Some of the herbalists want to go up there and give the bodies a proper burial,”

One of the men said, and the other spoke in agreement.

“They would have done it if it were the other way around. Us, not them,”

“I just can’t understand it, this is – was the women’s temple, this is where all of the children are born, they must’ve known,”

The other man worried his beard and cleared his throat before moving a tile.

“I’m sure that’s why they hit it.”

 

            But it wasn’t just the eastern temple, it was the western too, the northern and the southern. All four targeted, all inhabitants wiped out. I saw a poster go up a few months after the comet- now called Sozin’s after the Fire lord who called for the attack on the temples using the comets power- for a group to go and give those killed proper rest. I wanted more than anything to help, but my mother out right refused.

“Mother I-“

“Min- Yong, All that’s up there is death, that’s it! You can’t help anyone there’s no one to help!”

‘But their spirits!”

“Sprits?” she asked me tensely “You think their spirits can be at peace in the spirit world?”

The question was rhetorical.

“The spirit world doesn’t care about us Min, They allowed one nation to obliterate the other because of the Avatar! The Avatar- the bridge between our worlds- their connection to us! Can you imagine that! Letting all this happen and not intervening to help the people who hold not only the spirit of the avatar, but who loved the spirits more than any other people. They don’t care about us, or what we do to appease their wrath.”

She sewed furiously; I was rooted to the spot.

She said what everyone wondered, why did the spirits let this happen?

 

            The temple had three mountaintop structures, it was the second largest temple and in one foul swoop, it had been wiped off of the map. There seemed to be no answer, spiritual or otherwise for the loss of life.

            The fire nation solders had been killed on sight in the weeks after- there was the seeping scourge of colonies on the western banks of the earth kingdom, an issue we all worried about, and the very real possibility of another attack. If they could do it once, what was stopping them again?

Those were fears we all lived with for the first year or so, and try as we might to hope that we would find survivors, there were none to be found.

            When the group of women and men went over to the temple, they left with songs and prayers on their lips. They came back sullen and quiet. Those among them that spoke said that there were no survivors, that even fire soldiers were copious among the bodies. One woman, our own town priestess, was reduced to a shell. She said once, to the first person brave enough to ask, that there were no sprits in the hills 

            I swept our shop and manned the register when troops came through from towns even closer to the temples. Those towns were smaller, more like villages, and they suffered some of the worst blows. When the Fire nation swept though, they couldn’t help but notice that those earth kingdom families had greyer eyes and lighter builds. They were killed as though they were air nomads because of intermarriage somewhere down the line. When the earth soldiers stopped into my mother’s shop, they asked if she could mend a busted arm sleeve on a threadbare coat for free.

           She couldn’t say yes for kindness sake anymore, and I knew she hated each moment of it. She had to become tough, war weary, and dry, not compassionate to the boys trying to save our nation if we wanted food on the table. When we pulled ourselves out from debt, the national treasury came through and asked for war contributions.

            Ask is an overgenerous word, but I don’t want to make it seem like there was no inward desire to help our nation destroy the fire nation. Word came though that the water tribes would be contributing and the earth and water nations formed a tepid bond, as I became a young woman. I grew fond of the boys the passed through the town on their way to war, but the night of the comet had left me scarred. My hand, shoulders and face were dappled with ugly scars and caused my lips to turn up in a sneer at all times. My mother had suffered similarly on her hands feet and back, my brother, on the other hand, had scars on the insides.

            Most children, now young teens, feared the Fire nation above all else. Not necessarily the war that was so intrinsic with their people, but their fire itself. Harvest gatherings were now without bonfire, most people kept their heaths to a dull roar, the very thought of it’s uncontrollability and the destruction it caused warped the minds of our generation like paper too close to a flame. My brother woke up screaming more nights than one to the fear we were all engulfed in flames.

            My family was never wealthy, never in our line had we had more than we needed, but now in these bellicose times that we lived in, I wanted to change that. The idea that in one night an entire nation could be wiped out chilled us all to the bone, but my family, just three people? How many seconds would it take to exterminate us?

            I suppose sometime in my mid teens I became obsessed with the idea of raising a family and moving away from the horror of what was once my fantasy. I began looking for ways out, for opportunities to marry, but when I found none, I began to panic. The idea of keeping all of our eggs in one basket was eating away at me and my mother started to notice.

“Min, you haven’t been eating, is this about the anniversary?”

I nibbled my thumbnail, she sighed

“Mother, I’m just not hungry,”

“I haven’t seen you eat anything in two days Min, you can’t save us money by starving yourself,”

That hadn’t occurred to me yet so my look of interest was poorly disguised.

“Min, stop I’m not— don’t you dare take that as an excuse to not eat! I told you that is a bad idea. Would you look at me?”

            I did so; I looked at the greys coming into her hair to the bags under her eyes.

“You can’t change what happened, we just have to keep looking forward,”

She made it sound so easy. She could throw herself into work and her work helped fight those I hated most, at least indirectly. I was her helper, and at the time, though, I missed it then, I thought finding a husband was what she wanted me to do.

I thought she had me working the counter to talk to the boys that enter, flirt with them, and find someone who didn’t think me scarred. But I was scarred.

            I was as scarred as anyone was those days, just because I had the marks on the outside to prove it didn’t change the fact that everyone was reeling from the same trauma.

            My brother, the errand boy, was gone most days with our ostrich horse, delivering parcels for pocket change and vegetables. What he brought home, I made into stew and we would eat in silence, or my brother told short stories from his day.

            He didn’t sleep well, and because we shared a room, I didn’t sleep well either. He would pace and ask me questions about my day, the same repetitive questions night after night. He startled easily, even before the comet and he was afraid of the dark.

“Min, “ He would say, curled up on the windowsill, staring at the moon “ Do you think they are still out there, somewhere,”

“I don’t know Cho, “

“Do you think they will ever come back?”

I can’t remember if I ever replied.


	4. part 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Min-yong grows bolder.

**IV**

            Back in those days, when I was still utterly convinced my destiny was to rebuild my family, I tried to take the opportunity to leave when I was sixteen. It was the first time when the opportunity presented itself to me and the idea was too good to be true. A few islands away there was a port city called Luzho, a hub of all southern islands and a meeting point for both the earth and water nations. I was called to it and spent free time scouring ads for work. When soldiers came in I would always ask where they were headed, and usually they told me Luzho so I had a good feeling about the place. It was much bigger than home, much more civilized. It had more earth nation influence and a world renown tea house and spa. When I told my mother she was less than thrilled.

“Why? Why would you want to move so far away?”

“Mother, there’s nothing for me here-“

“You’re not looking for things here Min, you’re looking to get away from here, from home,”

“We don’t have a home, just a place to live,” I grumbled at her, kicking the stools we had acquired over the past few years for effect. Our plot of land had been long used as a training ground, most of the soldiers I talked to said they spent a few grueling months there. Their comments used to bother me to no end but as I grew, my attachment to the land that had once been ours faded, it was being used for a better purpose; one I could fully stand behind.

“Min,” She stopped working, that’s when I knew she was dead serious. Cho noticed too, he looked up from repairing his messenger bag.

“You are too smart to throw everything away in pursuit of some fantasy, you belong here with your brother and me,” Her tone was ‘that’s the end of that,’ but at that age, I never let it die.

“Mother, I care about you both too much just to stay here, I want to make money!’

“You think that’s what we need? Money?” she spat “What about hard work? Dedication? You think running away from here will magically solve your problems?”

I bit my tongue, or at least I almost did.

“What else is there to have but money?”

“Family,” she shouted, throwing her arms around a bit “ Love and comfort, an understanding that sticking to a problem can fix it!”

Her points were well reasoned, but I only heard what I wanted to.

“Family? Love and comfort? The nomads stayed here with those things and where are they now,”

She groaned over the last statement and buried her face in her hands, my brother looked feeble.

“Drop it Min, we aren’t bringing this up again,”

“There’s nothing else to bring up mother! This is everything, I’m leaving to help our family to do what I can to change our circumstance,” I said triumphantly while my mother shook her head.

“You are never going to learn Min,”

I couldn’t let her win, I was so caught up in how right I was, I never stopped to consider her side.

“What’s there to learn mother? You’ve said yourself that the spirits don’t care about us-“

“Are you listening to your self? You are implying that the death of a civilization is the motive for you moving out of the house. You are Min-Yong! This is not about you,”

I stormed out of the room and my brother was quick to continue working, ignoring my stupidity as my mother chased after me.

“Where are you going?!”

“To my room, I want to be alone,”

To be free, but I was not stupid enough to say that to her. My mother was too smart for me though.

“ You want your precious freedom? Find it on your own time, while you are still single, you live under my roof and will contribute to _this_ family!”

I slammed my door and shouted into my pillow. Her rules seemed so unfair to me at the time. The only thing I wanted was her to see me as more than that little burned girl she pulled from the fire.

            Cho came into our room after he finished cleaning the dishes, his hands were like prunes, and he sat on the stool near the window. I turned away from him to face the wall and the threadbare tapestry we used as insolation.

“You aren’t going to leave me, Min, are you?” he said eventually, his voice was soft and polite, like he was going to take my decision however I let him. He was a good son, he was respectable, and I was the lousy spitfire.

So of course, I didn’t respond to him.

            Soon, the seasons changed from fall to winter and the high mountains became snow capped and frigid. We pulled out our warm clothes from the attic and my mother told me to go around and ask if people needed new winter clothes. This was big business for us, winter was one of our most profitable times of year, and most of the soldiers were looking around for warmer clothes than the army provided. It was an easy sell.

            Our town was split in two by a river, and across was the shopping district where ladies whose fathers were still around, strolled with their beau’s and suitors in fine coats and dresses. They snickered at me and my burns behind their manicured hands. What I would do to pull back and hit them with a gust of wind! Throw them into the frigid water; ruin their make-up their fine combs in their sleek hair.

            As I continued my walk, fairly proud of the number of takers I’d had to fix hems and moth-fly holes, I noticed a shiny sign for a store I’d never seen. Most stores here were too fine for me to afford, so when one stood out as more for the common folk, it surprised me. Its location was not exactly choice; it was bookended by a brick wall and a sleepy old repair shop.

            So, forgetting my work for a while I pushed inside. The warm wall buffeted me backward, along with the kick up of my skirt and scarf. The door rang as it opened and I entered, glancing around.

            It was small; probably the size of our apartment without the rooms, but here there was a bar and a few tables. Its’ name hadn’t made it clear that it was a bar, so I was a little surprised. I’d never really been in a bar on purpose or by accident, so I stood on the threshold unsure of whether or to go or stay. Unfortunately the barkeep looked to me and smiled, tiled his long-hair-covered head.

“You lost little miss?”

            My skin turned to bumps at those words and I was rooted to the spot. I couldn’t think to nod or shake my head.

This made the men laugh, though there were only a few, and I didn’t recognize any, but one sitting down seemed to see past my fears.

“Oh, hey I know her, her Ma fixed our drapes, real nice work there,” he balked at me, leaning away from his steaming cup. I assumed it was some kind of sake or cider. The winter solstice was fast approaching, and drinks changed with the seasons.

“Thank you,” I stammered politely, my mind with summersaulting through ways to escape but this seemed to also to be a perfect opportunity to find a bit of my own space.

            This was not only new but a whole different sector, a world away from our cramped shop and it’s confined walls overrun with heirlooms saved from the fire and five years worth of hard worked memories. This place was warm and welcome, so unlike the cramped quarters of my home. Their eyes were so much more pleasant than my brother’s hollow eyes staring at the moon, like for once he could find answers there as the waterbenders do.

            In my pocket, my emergency allowance sat heavy and low and, without thinking, my burned fingers wrapped around it.

“I was wondering if you had any openings.”

The barkeep stared at me, and I, too, surprised at my response, gazed back at him. A few of the men started to snicker and one toward the end with his head covered in a shaggy messy of hair leaned around to look at me.

“Bold, aren’t you? “ the men agreed, their tones jovial but I was stilled stunned at my tenacity.

“I may, why don’t you come over, let’s talk in the back.”

He lifted the bar by a hinge and said something I couldn’t quite hear to the man closet to the door. His eyes were dull green, like my mother’s and he wore a thick mustache, and he winked at me as I passed. The man who vouched for me and another glanced at me, nodded, but turned back to their drinks and conversation.

“Smart girl,” and old man with long grey hair nodded, his topknot was drooping low with age.

            The last man, the ill kempt one, glanced at me long and low, and even in the muted firelight of the bar, I could tell his eyes were silver. The look from them stunned me, a moment gone and he was back to the bar but not a single word passed between us. I could only make out the worn red cap that covered the back of his head and a loose grey button at the top.

 

            The barkeep shook my hand, introduced me to his wife, Fei-Wei who looked over worked and exhausted as she turned a piping hot broth, a baby strapped to her back.

            He told me earnestly that he’d not have the money to pay me more than every fortnight, but he told me if I could find tips from these men, that I could keep them.

I told him yes before he even told me my hours; my mind was racing, my heart leaping in and out of my chest.

This was it; this was where I would find someone to take me elsewhere.

          

My mother obviously was less than pleased.

She stared at me, needles poking from her lips as she pinched the Dupioni skirt she was working on a form.

“This is not what I sent you out to do Min-yong, “ she said this calmly as Cho was stilling on the counter glancing at his receipts for the day. My mother wouldn’t want him to lose count.

“But, I can get my chores done, and Qiang told me I could keep any tips I collected,”

“Tips?” She hissed this, like it were a naughty word

“You think me having fewer hands around will be made up for with pity money?”

“Mom?” my brother piped up quietly and she lifted her finger to hush my reply.

“We made nine gold pieces today,” he said with a smile and this seemed to make my mother’s heart lift. We’d not had that high of a profit margin in months. My mother seemed in just a good enough mood to hear out my pitch as we retired up the stairs to our loft and she finshed our dinner.

“And I’ll cook dinner and bring anything back that I can mother, I can do this, just believe me, I can do this,”

I was moments away from proselytizing my job idea over our root stew, when she waved and told me I could go back.

“But if you don’t bring back money every day,” she snapped at me with her wooden spoon and I nodded dutifully.

“I understand Ma thank you, thank you,”

This was a grand momentary victory. I was so happy I could hardly eat. But unfortunately that feeling made my stomach growl all night, even Cho glanced at me in the darkness of our shared room.

“There are some sweet buns in the cupboard,” he told me softly, but I shook my head and covered my stomach with my pillow.

           

            I wish I could say my first day at work for Qiang was something I’d been picturing but it was nothing I expected. And in all fairness to the bar, it was no fault of the family who ran it.

            On my walk over in my thick worn coat and flat shoes I ran into a few soldiers. I spotted them quickly with their cheap military uniforms, and they quickly decided I was worth pestering. They weren’t ranked; they wore the simple mark of the kingdom and topknots held up with green cloth. One was armed with a sword and the other two had arm braces with bronze cuffs. The mark I’d not known before a few months ago when one had entered the shop.

Earthbenders, and they were as peevish as I’d ever known earthbenders to be.

“Hey there birdie,” one called, it was dark and few were out, so I knew they must be calling to me.

            I was getting water at least an hour earlier than I normally did, not occurring to me that this was the time some of these recruits were leaving bars and the pleasure house.

“Hey now, let’s not be so stuck up!” he called as I continued to ignore them and before I knew it, the ground I was walking on was twisted and fell hard on my knees.

“ That’s more like it, thank you Po,” the one with swords said with the hint of a slur. The other earthbender lagged behind them, and was sporting a thin scar on his cheek.

“Now where is a fine looking lady like yourself going at this hour?”

I stared at them as I attempted to right myself, the ground beneath me moved and I stumbled to find a solid surface they couldn’t toy with.

“Well, well, you’re spry,” he called and the other earthbender threw his arms out then unclenched his fists and I was shoved forward with a dull thud as I hit the chest of Po.

“That’s more like it,” he said, his accent was northern and gruff, he looked like an earthbender if I’d ever seen one. His feet were naked, even in the cold weather, and calloused and he had large, bulky, worn hands. He spent a moment looking at my terrified face then dropped me without a second thought

“Aw she’s all burned,” he grumbled to himself, his breath stank of ale. He pushed me back and the other two looked at me just as if to confirm the comment.

I doubled back to gather my bucket and water then run back to my house. My eyes running over with tears, I was fighting sobs as I scrubbed our laundry clean.

            The rest of the day, I learned how total a tab, the proper ways to heat sake and the names of our two spiced ales and who drank which. Qaing let me have lunch and I managed to get three copper pieces from a bet of who could finish a drink faster between two men. As the sun began to lower, the silver eyed man returned and looked at me disinterestedly as he sat down at his stool near the back.

            Qiang leaned down and told me that he was quiet, went by the name Ling but didn’t answer to it and had been a regular for a few months. This all seemed straightforward enough for me but I was certain to watch my words around him.

            I came over with a beer and a plate of cashews and smiled at him.

“Welcome back,” I told him simply and he stared at me, expressionless. He was wearing the same hat but now had a scarf over a good deal of his face.

“You got the job, ” he said, his hand moving directly to the cashews.

“Yes,” I said, perhaps too quickly but he nodded slowly as he casually crunched on the offering. there were a few more moments of silence before i blurted out.

"I can fix the button on your hat if you want. It's loose"

The man with the silver eyes looked up at me, plaid as ever, and I soon noticed his eyes weren't the only ones on me.

"Im fine," he said, slowly, slightly taken aback, a few of the men at the counter sniggered at my expense

I was embarrassed by my action so I left him to himself.

Eventually as the evening came, I went around to light candles and offer dinner menus to the few patrons sitting at tables busy with polite conversation. The job was easier than I had expected, much easier than washing clothes or preparing dinner had been. My mind was still uneasy with the thought of the earth benders, their words burned through my scars .

            Ling, just as I was leaving, asked for a refill and I obliged, he nodded in thanks as I backed away from his area but before I left, he cleared his throat.

“See you tomorrow Min,” he said blithely, and I was surprised to hear my name, but I bowed and smiled to myself.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [I'm never close enough to say](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-lr6OUM2RMI)


	5. part 5

**_V_ **

 

“She’s got a crush,”

At these words I could feel my face grow scarlet. Tien and his wife Yema were eating at their usual table near the fire, Yema was quite sure of her assessment.

I could feel my ears flush as I shook my head ferociously and excused myself to the kitchen. I didn’t look at Ling as I passed him on my way to the curtains, which separated the dining area from the rest of the building, but I noticed him glancing vaguely at me as I passed.

            Behind the curtains, I put down my empty tray and covered my face with my hands. The lack of sleep and intensity of work I had been putting myself through was showing on my burned hands, they were calloused and weary from scouring clothes in the icy river water and washing dishes the rest of the day.

            I could hear Fei-Wei laughing at my state; more, funny stories for her husband after I left.

“They’re just playing with you,” She said knowingly, tapping my shoulder, perhaps in the way an older sister would. She looked older but I’d learned over the past few months that she was only five years my senior, I also grew to appreciate her patience and advanced flavor palate. She made the best broth I’d ever tasted, and Qiang insisted that the reason he’d married her was for her magic in the kitchen. So far, it seemed like a valid excuse.

“I’m sorry Fei,” I eventually sighed, my face was returned to its natural complexion, and as soon as she saw my eyes behind my tired fingers she laughed again.

She told me I should ask him on a date, and I collapsed into my hands again and she laughed as she consoled me.

            The weeks went along like this, and Ling grew more comfortable with me, we would joke and talk, Fei egging me on every time a snuck back into the kitchen. Her son Jing was growing quickly, he called me Min Min and played in empty crates while his mother would make food and give me advice about men.

“Trust me Min, they don’t know what they want until they are holding it, you want to impress him, do it, but stalling is not helping anyone,”

            Stalling, it always felt like I was stalling. Reports of the war were seldom, and there was some news about the Fire lord’s young heir who had been born to a very young fire nation noble woman after his first wife had been sterile.

            Fei hummed disappointedly after hearing this news, glancing over to her own son. The son of a firelord was a child now, and from what most said he was born coincident with the comet, and the genocide. Some had hoped that if the child didn’t make it the fire lordship would go to some one in the line far less bellicose, and the long war would be over, but at six or seven, this prince certainly seemed like he was going to live long, and carry on in his father’s foot steps. I liked hearing the patrons’ opinions of these world events, most had minds and opinions that I’d never really considered.

            I spent many late nights in the bar listening and talking with old men, tired and world weary, some even were ones who cleaned up the air temples. Others even lost friends and family in the attacks.

“They want the Avatar’s head on a plate because then, no one will stand in their way and as far as they know, the Avatar wasn’t killed in the attacks,”

            That much was true, after the sixteenth anniversary of the previous Avatar’s death; there was no sign, head nor hair of an Avatar. No one set off to start his or her training; no one came out of the woodwork to become the leader of the world. The avatar should be a few years shy of twenty; he or she would be a few summers my senior, most likely covered in tattoos with shining grey eyes.

 

* * *

 

            “Min,” My mother’s inpatient face swam in my mind, I was nodding off at dinner, Cho was pushing around his rice to soak up the sauces in the curry, A large clump of rice had fallen into my lap, and I sighed and moved away from the table into the kitchen to clean myself off.

            At the counter I splashed water onto a rag and scrubbed so it wouldn’t stain, my mother lingered behind me in the doorframe.

“Take the day off tomorrow,” she told me, it didn’t sound like a request.

“Mother, if I do that Qiang won’t be able to do it by himself, I’m too valuable,”

“No, I need you around the shop tomorrow, I’m going out of town to pick up a few orders with your brother, and we’re going to the base to do some fittings, ” She nodded to several garments waiting to be steamed.

“Why didn’t you tell me this sooner?” is what I would have said if we’d had this conversation half a year ago, but now I was too tired to protest, so instead I asked Cho to take Qiang my apologies before they left.

            Because the base was situated over our old plot they knew the path very well but the king had sent ordnance for us southern colonies to travel as safely as possible. Though we were mostly eastern, my mother followed the rules as closely as she expected us to follow hers. We had a small birch painting of him in our living area with incense and salts, along with Dai-li marked official prayer beads. Tomorrow morning they would set out early with our ostrich horse and the supplies they needed.

            I fell into my bed without changing clothes, and my brother touched my shoulder as I glanced over to him sleepily.

“I wanted to tell you, but you looked really tired, but I got something for you today,”

He left a small scroll tied in a piece of twine without a seal, it was sloppy, and perhaps slightly squished.

            I sat up and found a match to light the candle by my bed, my brother watched me from his bed, curiously.

I scanned it, the script was well practiced but hasty, much better than my penmanship, the writer had obviously spent some time learning to write.

           

            _If you’re free, I’d wish to speak with you tomorrow, outside the bar after you work, don’t worry; I won’t keep you out too late._

_-Ling_

            My chest tightened after I read the note four or five times over. My grip alone was tight enough to warp the parchment. My brother’s eyes were still upon me though, so I tried to remain like the Turtle duck, serene above water, furiously paddling below.

“What does it say Ming,”

“Nothing,” I told him, and extinguished our candle. “Get some rest,”

I shoved the note under my pillow and shook with excitement, quite forgetting my promises regarding my whereabouts for the next day.

            I barely slept from excitement and woke with my brother as he prepared to leave with my mother at the crack of dawn. Cho made me a little swan from a candy wrapper he found in his pocket and left it at the breakfast table for me to find, as when they left, it was up to me to clean the leftovers.

            I placed it on the pressing board, and then collected our dishes to clean. I left the loft and entered the downstairs storefront with my mother’s handiwork and finished deliveries in the still-dark space, then exited the building. I filled the water bucket in the community spigot shared in the courtyard among the other converted shops in this area and attempted to smile past my exhaustion at the women working their morning chores. None of us were benders, that much was clear.         

            In the offering shrine to the Spirit world at the center of the courtyard there was one of the babies of one of mu neighbors resting peacefully in her swaddling. This was an age-old practice, to invoke the favor of the spirits, to ask them to gift their child with earth bending.

            As far as I knew it didn’t work, but it never seemed to stop them. At this time of day, the sky with mostly grey, touched at the clouds with pale oranges and pinks, like the life was returning to it. No one had bothered me since those soldiers back in the winter. Fei told me that it was because I was no longer carrying myself as a girl. Boys don’t mess with women because they remind them of their mothers. I didn’t tell my own mother, because I knew she would ask me, isn’t that what I wanted. She was still sour from our many disagreements about me moving out on my own.

            She told me that she would have been smacked if she’d ever had this tone of voice with her own mother. My grandmother was very old, I’d only seen her a few times as my mother had moved far away to live with my father. My mother’s family lived near Omashu, they even possessed the darker green eyes of the kingdom. My mother and father married after he lived in Omashu for several years for school. He’d had to move back after his father died and left his mother alone to tend to the farm. She was an Airbender, and my mother told me that father could not in good conscious let his elderly airbending mother tend an earth nation farm.

When he moved back, my mother left with him, and yes, the coincidence of the situation his death left my mother in was not lost on her.

            As the day broke, I opened my mother’s shop and sat inside the door on her stool, mindlessly straightening a hem. Throughout the day people would pick up parcels, and give me a small tip or ask me how I was. I was pleasant enough, I suppose, my mother’s reminders to smile at every stranger rung through my mind. “Give them more to see than your scars.

            Around midday, a messenger boy came to me with a few notes, some for my mother and one, unexpectedly, for me.

“Your brother told me to tell Mr. Qiang that you were running the shop today, he said it would be fine, but he said that the patrons would revolt,”

I tried not to blush, Qiang was extremely nice to me, but as I reached for my pocket book to tip him, he handed me one other letter, with my name written in a familiar hand.

“One of them gave this to me,”

            After the pageboy left, I tore into the letter and found it was just a line or so, rather hasty.

 

_I’ll come to you then, see you at nightfall._

_-Ling_

 

            I was flushing; thank goodness the shop was empty. After, my hands were clumsy and I kept running the needle into the flesh of my fingers. One of my mother’s clients, buying thread, noticed this and tsked at me, told me to eat more leeks.

The day dragged on after the letter, what could Ling possibly want with me, besides, besides something so obvious as noticing my attraction for him? Oh what a conversation that would be!

            No, I decided, I would finish my work, I wouldn’t think about it. But even as I worked my lines were crooked and uneven.

I gave up eventually and made dinner. I stewed long noodles into a broth with cream and fresh greens. I tasted it every so often, spicing as I went, trying not to make any worse scars for my hands from the pot.

            My mother and brother didn’t return come night fall, and I was concerned, before I heard an impatient knock on the door.

I squawked, out loud, when I realized the source. I fixed my self in every reflective surface between the kitchen and the front door, tossing my apron aside at the last moment before opening the door. When I gathered my breath to greet him, I didn’t expect him, albeit gently, to shove me back inside and push the door closed behind him.

            He was tall, up close and personal, and he smelled like the tavern with a hint for something airy, like pine trees. The suddenness of his presence over me stunned me into silence; I stared at him as one might a ghost.

“Hello, pleasantries, what not, I’m sorry,”

He looked rushed, he was wrapping his coat around him. We were high enough in elevation that spring hadn’t quite made it yet.

“Sorry,” I breathed

“I’m leaving town, soon, I can’t stay any longer,” He took a step back, away from me, and he looked me up and down, “and I would feel bad, if I hadn’t said anything,”

“Leaving,” I said, trying, most likely failing, to not have the pain show in my voice. “Why, Ling, I can’t let you leave on an empty stomach,”

He stared at me, and I back at him, neither of us had much to say, though the promise of food, and the smell of it stewing above us seemed to pique his interest.

“You have, extra?”

“Enough for a friend,”

I don’t believe I was ever that smooth again.

I lead him upstairs, my heart racing. To be alone with a man in the house, mere feet from where I slept? Oh this was too much for me to take. He glanced around at our tiny kitchen before his eyes settled on the little crane my brother folded for me. He lifted it up and investigated it, curiously.

“This is quite impressive,” he said as he traced the folds, and I told him, embarrassed that my little brother made them for me all the time, then I quickly added he could have it, if he liked it. He smiled at me, and tucked it into the loose fabric over his breast.

            I poured bowls for the two of us and we sat at my low table. I clapped my hands together for a prayer, and he watched me, silently. I noticed him take a long look at my mother’s shrine to the Earth king.

“What do you pray for,” he asked me off-hand as we ate, and though I was slightly taken aback, I answered him.

“Tradition, my father taught us prayers from his Mother, she was a monk,”

His grey eyes narrowed as he slurped up the soup, then spluttered slightly as he pulled the bowl from his lips.

“Earth benders have monks?”

“She wasn’t an earthbender,” I told him softly, “She was an airbender,”

At that, he was completely silent, he barely even moved, he only considered his chipped china bowl still grasped in his gloved hands.

“An airbender huh,” he asked, perhaps to me, but it sounded more like to no one in particular. I was still, even six and a half years after; it was very hard to talk about. That’s why we fought the war of coarse, but scars prove that fire doesn’t consume all that it touches.

“You don’t pray,” I responded in turn, and he looked back at me like I hadn’t said anything of note, “I noticed that about you, I watch you a lot,”

I’m sure I hadn’t meant to say that, and the heat of the soup and my embarrassment colored my face and ears pink.

He had a hard chuckle at this admission and set down his bowl with a soft sound.

“I noticed that too, I have to admit, the bar isn’t that big, and I have pretty good hearing,

“I’m, I’m so sorry, I didn’t mean for you to,” I was pushing away from him, my genteel air completely dissipated. He laughed at my expense, once or twice as I fretted, but eventually one of his gloved hands caught my wrist and he smiled.

“Don’t worry your secret is safe with me, and hey, I thought you deserved this official good-bye so,” He winked at me and my heart raced in those few surrounding seconds, “Take that as you will. “

            His eyes were so calm, like the sky after rain, or snow reflecting back the midnight moon. His eyes were silver, more than mine, more than my father’s had been though his memory was little more than a burning leaf curled and smoking to nothing in my mind. Ling seemed so normal in the apartment, so clandestine.

He watched me and fidgeted with his gloves and the end of his sleeve.

“Aren’t you hot?” I asked softly and he didn’t respond, I thought it strange at first but a moment later my mind began to race.

And in that moment, I swear, a spirit whispered the answers to the puzzle beyond me in my ear. The eyes, the coverings, the name.

            I stood, too quickly, the table rattled, I spilled my soup, Ling stared at me, perplexed, but again, he was fast enough to steady his bowl.

“What’s your name,” I said, my voice was shaking, I knew before he opened his lips.

“What?”

“Your name, you’ve never responded to Ling, what is your real name.”

He didn’t answer; he only looked up at me. I pressed on, the truth invigorating me.

“You covered your head, your hands, you hide your eyes, your name. The draft is coming, and you’re going to leave, Ling, I know, just tell me,”

He breathed and I told him I couldn’t hear him. He whispered back and I told him to speak up, he muttered, and I shouted for him to be clearer.

            Before I knew it my skirts buffeted wildly about my legs, flapping like a sharp breeze had filed our entire apartment. I clasped my hands over my mouth.

He remained seated the whole while, but his body rose to meet me, and he caught himself by extending his legs. His feet shifted below him, bracing against the wind, he moved his arm in a fluid but sharp gesticulation, I could only hear my heart beating.

“It hurts too much Min,” He said, barely louder than a whisper, “ I can’t say anything else,”

            He turned around, moving quickly away from me like sand slipping through my fingers the countless times in my childhood I attempted to make it form to my will. He moved like water down the stars, his secret was out; he could use his airbending to move away from me.

“Wait, Ling, wait,”

I raced after him, but he moved like wind, he was out the door, and when I looked for him in the street, he was already gone.


	6. part 6

**_VI_ **

            Qiang set a glass of pale wine in front of me as I sat at the bar, my feet dangling from the stool.

“You shouldn’t punish yourself, Min, he was a drifter, there’ll be others,” Fei cooed as she braided my hair. She was carrying her son on her back still, and checking the daily soup every so often, but between stirs she was giving me the most intricate braid I’d ever had.

            Qiang’s bar hadn’t opened yet. I had arrived early after cleaning up from the minor tornado in my apartment. My mother and brother came in late and were sour from the treatment from the recruits; I couldn’t talk about anything anyway. I looked disheveled and weepy, Fei let me wash up in their basin and offered to do my hair and listen to my woes.

            I’d told her everything, except the one thing that was really tearing me apart, that he was an airbender, living and breathing. Fei was very supportive of my unrequited crush though; I had a feeling that in her past, she was all too familiar with the pain. Qiang and she had been arranged when she was 17, he was almost ten years her senior. Despite the age gap, they seemed to love each other, or at least respect and care for one another. Qiang wasn’t exactly the most handsome, but he was very sensible, and had a very good mind for business.

“You aren’t done falling for people, Min, you are strong enough to keep your head up,”

With her strong, sure fingers she lifted my chin to look her in the eye.

“Live your life,”

Her husband stared at us from behind the bar but didn’t receive the look Fei’s crisp green eyes transferred to mine. Her hand was coiled around mine on the bar and her other hand steady on my chin, we were speaking a language I was only just learning the words to.

            Hearts speak loud words every so often, and the mind speaks softly, constantly. It is so much easer to ignore the words you hear the most, favor the ones which are stronger and new. I knew I was young and in love, but I also knew my family needed me, as my nation did, and no matter how I tried to focus on the bubble of my world, the war was becoming all too real.

Fei squeezed my hand and with her constant energy she slapped her hands together and told me that we needed to work.

“These tables won’t clean themselves!”

            And like that, the dull ache of the now empty barstool slipped away. Soon he was replaced with soldiers, then empty once again as they were called to the front lines. The front lines were far away, but not nearly as far as they once had been. The water tribe became a common discussion topic, along with their fierce warriors in the south. There were talks that the Fire Lord Sozin had no luck in the south and some worried that this would lead to a direct assault.

            In the world of the bar, solders returned as broken men, months later, with scars worse than mine, still fresh and bandaged. Once burned, they seemed to notice me more, like I was finally enough for them. More than once a soldier would come to me, and ask if I wanted him, that I was fine for them. Their words were as warped as their faces, and they never tempted me, if anything they shored my resolve.

            Ling’s fate weighed heavily on my mind. I saw his face everywhere, and I saw the tired way he looked at the world that he had remained in, despite everything he’d known being destroyed. I would listen in every conversation I could, trying to hear if someone had seen him, knew of an airbender, knew of others who had escaped. The news was never good, though. There were battles in the west, heavy, uncounted losses from a battle in dry grass, where the wind shifted and the Earth nation was down-wind. I found myself staring at the statue of the spirits in my square, asking quietly if they even cared.

            Captains, now growing desperate for young blood, soon noticed my brother. There was no push in the great walled cities for soldiers, which left us on the outlying territories to defend our country, our land, and our heritage. My mother kept him from most greedy-eyed officers, but as a page, all people knew him. After a while she could only watch as he left our home to return to the land that once belonged to us, to train.

“As a messenger,” he insisted to my teary-eyed mother, I only watched him with unspoken loss.

            We spent the final night prior to his enlistment staring at the stars and waiting for a shooting star, just as we had watched the comet years before. He leaned into me and though he was three years my junior he gave me a look that’s spoke to an age far greater than my own.

“Remember when we used to watch for Bison?” he possessed a confused smile, or perhaps an unsure one. I told him that I had and he nodded, took a beat to collect his thoughts.

“I want other children to have that, that wonder, that joy,” he sighed, “I know everyone thinks they are gone, but I know there out there somewhere,”

And then, in that private moment between us I wanted to tell him he was right, that we would win, that there was at least one, somewhere. But I didn’t say a word, my mouth was dry, I could only picture Ling, in a moment of weakness, and was weak too, scared, and weak and small. My brother told me softly, to avoid breaking me even more, that he would visit every time he could, that he was working directly under a commander, that he was safe.

“And I’ll keep us all safe.”

            He kept his word, enough for me anyway, he found us in his uniform, on his government-provided ostrich horse and would excitedly tell us any scrap of good news he could. We heard first-hand the battles we had won, he told us of the skirmishes on the western border many of the troops from our town were sent to, even intelligence from the front lines. This mostly centered around the Fire nation royal family, for as old as the Evil Lord Sozin was, he was also still active on the war front. Some reports that Cho regaled sounded impossible, that Sozin was on fire navy boats looking for the Avatar, that he would leave his inner sanctums to do something like that seemed preposterous. I told Qiang as I manned the bar, and he shook his head.

“That sounds like a nightmare I’d tell to my little one to keep him from leaving his bed at night,”

            He was not a fan of war after it had changed his patrons, and though my brother was positive that the war would end, my boss wasn’t so sure.

“I don’t see an end in sight,” He glanced off to the kitchen and his son who was undoubtedly asleep on the other side with his wife, once again with child.

“I don’t want this war to call my name and my son’s in fifteen years, but the Fire nation will never stop, they don’t know how.”

 

            The Seamstress business was booming and eventually I had to help out more, and find a replacement at the bar for me, though Fei and I would meet any time we could, and I would help with their growing family and business from time to time.

            In my eighteenth year, my mother told me that she wanted me to prepare for the matchmaker. My revolt against her was long gone in my heart, and the only words I could hear was that all I would do, I would do for our family. In my room I found Ling’s letters and ran my fingers over the parchment as I had done ten thousand times before. His life was as smoke is, ephemeral and vague. He was representative of the world my brother believed in, and the one I had always wanted.

            Perhaps it was fate then, that the great trade city Luzho, the one I had once tried to escape to, had been attacked. It was an island away but the largest city in the eastern islands, targeted because of it’s distance to the land, status for trade and really due to the fact that in terms of naval prowess, no one could stop the fire nation.

“A nation of islands,” Qiang sighed one evening while I was over, playing with his newborn, “They’ll always have the naval advantage, us Earth nation islands don’t stand a chance.”

            Though my brother initially wrote that the fight was in our favor, eventually it fell to the Fire nation. It was the largest and closest city, and this caused us in our tiny town straddling a river, which had already felt the devastation the fire nation can bring, to fear the threat of war on it’s borders.

            The matchmaker was one of the first to leave, along with dozens of families to make it to Ba Sing Se, the impenetrable city. My mother didn’t even suggest it; she didn’t want Cho to return to an empty house with no way of finding us. We spent nearly a year watching neighbors leaving and offering to keep anything they needed to save, or try to talk them out of leaving in the first place. My brother’s visits became less frequent, he told us the commanders needed more letters, more information and faster than ever before. We thought for sure he was safe though; no one shoots the messenger.

            That was until he sent us a letter, which stated that he was being promoted into the infantry, no longer a messenger. My mother collapsed upon reading this, she sat in her bed, and read the letter a dozen times, hoping beyond hope that he wasn’t being honest. Soon we received information from his general telling us that Cho was off to defend the northern provinces.

            Cho was our swan song to nationalism, my mother took down her portrait of the Earth king, packed away her prayer beads, then sold them, we stopped leaving incense at the shrine. I found myself on long walks about the city, watching young families, not unlike how my own was once racing around, playing with swords and fighting each other playfully as their mother washed their linens.

Qiang eventually bought up a market and I would shop there for anything I could, and he would always give me a discount. I watched as his two children, both sons named Jeng and little Tensi toddle then walk. I was a baby sitter any day I could be.

            Jeng was bold and curious, he often got into things he shouldn’t have but Tensi was a bit more cautious and but very inquisitive. I would walk them from their father’s store to me and my mother’s, holding Jeng’s hand and carrying Tensi on my back as he asked about the sky.

            I wish that they had been with their mother when the attack occurred, I wish I wasn’t changing Tensi as the first fire bomb hit some distance away, I wish I had time to prepare, to run, to collect everything I could.

            Life never leaves you with such time, and I scooped up both boys as quickly as I could and nearly plowed into my aging mother as she climbed the stairs to find me. She took Tensi and we both ran around outside to find the ostrich horse. Veslio was older but still very sturdy, he was nervous from the shouting as I coaxed him from his stable. Even in the worst of moments, I could always calm him.

            I held his reigns and helped my mother board him, he was only strong enough to carry one now, I could run, and Jeng was coiled against my back like a rucksack. I hadn’t even changed from my house shoes.

            The streets were panicked, there were screams and sounds of fire and I ran as quickly as I could, my mother in tow. Jeng wailed to be put down, but I held him tighter, I could hear Tensi whimpering in my mother’s arms. The crowds were thick and rushing away from the bedlam. I had Jeng on my back with his legs held tight in my arms, many others pushed past us as I tried to urge the ostrich horse on through the crowd.

            Twenty paces from us there was a crash, several jets of flame arced over a house and lit the roof aflame, I only allowed myself a short look, as I kept running, hoping to make it to the foot bridge across the river, Veslio was anxious and with an unexpected tug his reigns were retched from my arms. I fell and was almost stampeded by the crowd, and in the chaos, Jeng sprinted away from me, crying for his mother. I reflexively shielded my face from the crowd, but soon, I noticed a shadow over me.

            My mother was keeping the terrified steed under her strong grip but his eyes were wild and afraid, she looked just as scared. I got up, and told her to go find Jeng, that I would find her. She shook her head. She looked terrified.

“Min no, please I cannot lose you,” she grabbed my wrist, shifting Tensi to her other arm, dropping the reins and pulled me toward the bridge, I heard a shout and I turned back to see several men in sharp suits of armor running into the street. They were grabbing people and holding them back, they were capturing people by wrapping trip lines around their ankles.

“Keep moving mom, I’ll come back to get you, find Jeng, I’ll be there,”

She held my arm her expression pleading with me, but I gave her a loving look, the best I could muster with the shouts from our neighbors and the sobs of the toddler in my mother’s arm.

“Promise me, Min, you have to find me,”

            I let go of my mother, smiled and slapped the ostrich horse as hard as I could; I had to trust she would save the boys. I could hear her in my mind, begging me to follow, but my instinct lead me to face them, like I had the one lone soldier ten years before.

            I ran back, smoke from the fire was making it hard to breathe and I ran back a few streets before I found any fire benders. They stared at me surprised as I squatted low and did my best imitation of an air bending move.

“Come on and get me, Savages,”

Several made interested noises, and dropped the other townspeople to come to me. They taunted me and I held my ground. The all looked like ghouls in their masks, I decided, that this was how I would save my family at long last, I wouldn’t be a mother, I would be a martyr, it all made perfect sense.

            Then, everything changed. One swung a large club and with a wallop, I was out cold.


	7. part 7

**_VII_ **

            I didn’t know how long it took me to come to. My limbs and head felt fuzzy and sluggish, I couldn’t remember anything from the moment I was captured until I awoke and I was very hungry and groggy.

When I came to, the world around me was hard and dry, the air echoed and soon I realized that I was in a metal room. After a few minutes of considering, I realized the room was listing.

With that I shot up, but soon realized I was fettered to the floor and could only kneel. I fought the restraint and when that proved futile, I looked around and started to scream.

            It didn’t take long until there was a noise at the door of a large bolt being moved and soon, I was staring face to face with a fire nation solder, covered in pointy armor and a mask like a skull. It had shoulder pads that were long and pointed and dark armor edged in stripes of crimson. He looked like an evil spirit.

“Quiet prisoner,” he grumbled and I rattled the chains.

“I’m hungry,” I remember saying, like it mattered, behind the mask the solder snorted.

“Do I look like I care, now be quiet,” He turned around and walked out, but soon after, a new face came to the door.

This time, it actually had a face, though two faceless goons in identical uniforms flanked him. He had long silver and black hair, partially held up in a topknot, his uniform looked nicer and had gold filigree. I hung my head trying to hide my eyes but I felt my skin pucker to gooseflesh when his boot steps came to pause in front of me. I heard him ignite a hand full of flame from his hand; the light changed in the room and moved the shadows like a puppeteer.

“ Ten years ago, little girl, ten years ago my men and I changed the world,”

He knelt down and reached me back by my hair, his eerie roan eyes gazed deep into mine.

“You wouldn’t have been more than a child when we killed them, were your parents airbenders? Grand parents? I’ve killed enough like you to see it. And your scars,” he dragged a finger along my cheek, “Seems like you’ve met my kind at least once.”

I pulled my head away in disgust, and he let out a hard laugh as he reignited the flame in his hand and grabbed my hair once more.

“You may not be a bender yourself but I know you’ve had contact with them, my men saw you pull some thing fresh before they took you in, something that would have gotten most people killed.” He drew the flame close to my face.

“Lucky for you, my lieutenant here thought you might have some useful information, so, let’s hear it,”

He was far too close to me for comfort.

“So if you want to see that hovel you call a town again, you should get talking.”

I stammered, the heat from the flames was hurting my skin and singeing my hair.

“I don’t know anything,” I said, mostly the truth, and he pushed the flames closer, my heart raced more quickly and I tried to squirm away from him but I was pushed into the metal hull of the ship.

“Now, this will not hurt me a bit, and if you tell me, I will give you a little reward,”

His voice became almost playful at this and the fire was kissing my cheeks before I begged for him to stop. He pulled his hand away and laughed.

“See, you’re not making this any easier for yourself. Don’t you want to see your family?”

            This made me panic, and my mind raced frantically for a solution. Did they know my family? Did they know about my brother fighting them even now, or our farm that was being used to train against their troops? I was fighting to keep my wits about me and in a moment, I changed the script and lied.

“I don’t have a family! I’m alone!”

I shouted this, and even though it was a bold lie, its coarseness was lessened as my word echoed in the chamber.

            Perhaps it was fitting that I never saw my mother again, my last memories of her would always be her strength, running away to save two young children after losing her adult ones. Cho was much the same. But even as I remember those unkind memories, know that I learned this long long after these moments of tense silence save the crackle of fire. I was trying to survive, to make it back to my family, the irony is not lost on me that I never really could, and yet…

“What made you pretend to airbend then,” he hissed and my mind raced.

“I wanted out, I was starving, and I can help.”

He moved away from me, I felt the ground inching toward my advantage.

“Help me? How do you suggest that?”

            Commander Leulin, as I eventually learned was his name, was looking to find the Avatar as the Fire lord promised a promotion to Admiral with a seat at his war council table. I didn’t have anything for him, but what I did have was skills he thought useful enough to keep me around.

            Fire nation war ships are cold and metal, filled with dangerous equipment and instruments and boiling hot pipes fueled by boiler rooms of silent, hard working grunts. My grey and yellow-green dress was replaced with one of heavy red with a black snitcher and a red ribbon to pull up my hair. I looked nothing like the delicate fire nation women I’d heard of with their dark features and burning eyes. I looked completely out of place, but I was safe on this ship, and the commander wanted me for information about the islands, which I was willing to give him.

            I told him nothing of the Earth nation’s presence, advised him away from towns I knew of and cities that they could raid. I felt safer than I ever had before, and not only that, but I was actively changing the coarse of the war in some small way.

            I was given a barrack to sleep in alone in the bowels of the ship, my room was murky and always smelled like seawater, but I was allowed to wander on deck when my council wasn’t needed. The crew, out of armor was far more hospitable, and most sported scars and marks of their own, many self inflicted.

“Fire’s a double-edged sword, I’m afraid,” one explained to me as we huddled around a fire while our ship moved about the low latitudes. The ship roamed around, what they referred to as the ice ocean, as that was the speculated place of hiding for the avatar. According to one of the crew, there was deep intelligence that the elder air nomads had found the Avatar, and he, as the reports went, was told at a very young age.

“They told him right before the comet, so the stories go, so he’s in the know, and he’s out here, some where,”

“But wasn’t the northern air temple also all male?” I asked as Taru increased the flames, he was a lieutenant, and probably the kindest on the ship.

“Yes but that’s on the Earth continent, getting there is challenging enough. The West was sacked, the North was attacked with all military force, as was the south, and the Eastern was burned, compleatley” He glanced to my look of disgust and pain, sighed then kept going.

“In truth, it’s Lord Sozin. He’s convinced the Avatar is in the south, outside his reach, we don’t agree with him, or disagree for that matter,”

He had fiery brown eyes, they seemed unusual among the gold and amber ones of his crewmates.

“It’s not personal, Feimin,” This was the name I was going by, I added Fei to keep her in my thoughts, as I often prayed her children had made it back to her. Truthfully, I was just trying to keep them all safe, for as long as I could.

            When we had spent every coast looking for what the fire nation referred to as “Obvious deviants,” we ended up falling back, far far away from the lands of my birth, to the western coast of the earth kingdom. Leulin had explained to his crew that they would be rewarded handsomely for their services to the Fire nation, but left me largely to question what I would be doing.

            The western coasts showed much more obvious signs of conflict, burned forests, abandoned port cities, fire navy ships that were lying sunk in shallow water. Several of the towns we stopped in to refuel and recharge were being used to mine for metals, as there was a huge push to mine the rich lands of the Earth nation, as apposed to the Volcanic islands which composed the fire nation’s ancestral lands. Taru was kind enough to fill me in on much of the Fire Nations history, or tell me ingredients to the spicy foods they all preferred, or even bring me things to read.

He was around Qiang’s age, but perhaps a few years his junior. He was not a young man, but not old either, and he was strong fire bender, which I found out when they would firebend on the upper deck. Taru and the other soldiers would spar with fire from time to time and I would sneak up in the observation platform while the helmsman napped to watch.

            Benders were very uncommon in the south eastern islands, most people assumed it was because the island was technically air nation holding, but in reality, it was probably just because earth benders are the least common and the islands don’t hold that many people. Earth benders, thus, were never really around to watch earth bend, let alone spar with their bending. Along with that, the few water benders I saw in my life were healers, and not much for showing off, and air benders were killed when I was a child. Not to mention the eastern air temple was mostly young, pregnant women, and the elderly, so not a whole lot in terms of mock fighting.

            Fire benders, a least these men, were quite the opposite; they were wild, bored and in peak condition. They could propel themselves in wild spins and kicks, all punctuated with arcs of flame. I was embarrassed and more than a little afraid to be around them as they stripped off their armor and threw around fire balls, though I didn’t mind watching. Taru’s skill was obvious, even among the other soldiers. He could preform deft leaps and fire propelled cartwheels. More than once I suppressed the urge to cheer.

            They laughed and fought, some times singed clothes and hair. Most wore topknots, many wore beards and all had nearly back hair, as they were from the fire nation, after all.

            This was something I nearly constantly reminded myself as I lived on the fire navy ship. These men and their commanders were responsible for the genocide of a nation, and the subsequent war. Each and every one of them had the blood of a civilization on their hands, whether they liked it, or admitted to it, or not. Some days I would stare at the horizon of the ship and wonder, what exactly I had gotten myself into.


	8. part eight

**_VIII_ **

            When we finally docked in the fire nation, one of the islands furthest east, there were several dozen ships docked, some undergoing repairs with great showers of sparks from welding and mending the hulls. It was deep in summer, and most everyone was wandering around in the lightest clothes possible, the crew took their leave from the ship with little more then their under clothes, most of which I had mended at some point or another. Commander Leulin made sure each of them knew the port of call before leaving, and assigned Lieutenant Taru to keep an eye on me until he got back.

            We left together soon after the other crew disembarked, and he told me that he knew a very good place for hot noodles, that weren’t ‘too spicy’.

            As we walked I felt myself breaking into a sweat immediately, their slap dash attempt at clothing me wasn’t very good for these hot temperatures. So Taru offered to get me something lighter so I wouldn’t bake in the sun.

“If I brought back your body, the commander would know I disobeyed a direct order,”

“But if you bring me back in different clothes?” I argued, though I could feel myself getting lightheaded.

“I’ll think of something, come on,”

            Past the docks and taverns there were many people, many fire nation people, of all shapes and sizes and ages. There were young women with delicate hair styles, older women being carried by large servants on palanquin, poor beggars, young with lopsided hair styles and little more than loin clothes running after each other with swords. And everything, everything was painted, colored, dyed or patterned in red. There were red marquees, red banners, red clothes of every shade and style.          

The symbols of the fire nation blazed everything, along with the sigil of the military, which I had gotten used to seeing all over the ship. I had never seen this much red in my entire life, it seemed like some kind of brainwashing tactic to me, but I didn’t think to mention it to Taru as he dragged me to clothe me more appropriately for the weather.

            The first clothier we came across was an old woman sitting on a crate fanning herself with a woven palm frond fan and sporting an exhausted look.

“Excuse me ma’am do you have something she could wear for this weather?”

Taru asked softly and with one look at me, the woman jumped up, and then with another glance at us, she seemed lightly bewildered.

“Of coarse young man, anything for a brave military officer,” She walked to me and gave me a cursory once over, then gave me her fan as a sign of good will.

“ _Flamey-o,_ Miss,” she sounded surprised, and spent a few moments gazing into my eyes “Come back here miss we’ll get you something cooler.”

            I followed her back, her shop was tiny and fit into it was enough clothes to cover an army. Some of the fabrics were quite exquisite; there was linen, and stiff wools, batiks and elegant brocades. I was taken aback by the quality and array of fabrics that I hardly noticed the woman taking my measurements and probing me with questions.

“Are you from the Earth kingdom? Your eyes are so unusual, and your hair!”

The comment made me touch my hair uncomfortably; though it was admittedly much lighter than any of theirs, it was still just brown.

“I am,” I told her as she went to look for something to fit me, and then came back with a tunic and skirt. With layers of fabric of various lengths I tried them on, and though not prefect, they were much cooler. She even helped me tuck and wear the layers appropriately; finally she wrapped the snitcher from my other outfit so it looked a bit less cobbled together.

            She showed me what I looked like in a mirror and I nearly guffawed. She called Taru is and he was covering his mouth as he looked at me, stroking his beard. As if I didn’t know he was smiling.

“Looks fine, “ he said and the woman had me turn, it was nice to be in a shorter skirt, but it was also odd, it was much shorter than I was used to,

 Taru paid, and the price was low thanks to a soldiers discount, and his money was square and dense looking, much different from the round pieces back home.

When we left the shop I made sure to offer the fan back to the elderly woman but she insisted I keep it, and then after considering, I realized why.

“Scars seem to be a lot more common in the military,” I commented to Taru as we walked the low streets, I was getting looks, and though they could have been for any number of reasons I suspected it was the one which I was the least responsible.

“Yes, fire bending injuries are common but covered up, they have creams and make-up,” He glanced down to me, noticing how I was now holding the fan.

“If I ever find some money, I’m going to try those,” I huffed, and we continued our walk.

            The noodle place was good, very good in fact, and I ate my fill without burning my mouth for the first time in months. Taru commented on and explained various customs of the mainland, like the offering pots at the front of the store, with all proceeds going toward the war effort. There were dark out times to save oil to be used in the war, even sign-up requests for nurses and field aids.

“Nothing standing in the way of victory, huh,” I sighed as I slurped up the broth and he watched me in the melancholy way he often did.

“I should probably take you back to the ship, the commander will be back soon!” he remembered suddenly. After slapping a few gold coins on the counter we rushed out of the shop, he even threw a “That was delicious, Hotman!” as we careened through the curtains.

            Back on the ship I went back to my room and stared at the fabrics while awaiting the Commander’s return. I changed into one of the thick robes I was used to wearing and tucked my new outfit under the starchy covers of my sheets. Soon, one of Leulin’s attendants came to fetch me. I followed him into the observation tower, through the control room, back to the captain’s war room where the Commander sat with several scrolls of reports and, to my surprise, another commander.

  I blinked, silently taking-in the room before they both eventually looked up at me, poring over the same set of maps in an area I knew well.

“So this is her, huh?” the other commander huffed and Leulin nodded.

“She’s been our mother hen since picking her up in some dirt farm, she’s got some helpful tendencies, but she really isn’t being used to her full potential.”

Leulin’s voice dropped on those words and I felt a chill run along my spine, the other Commander sat up slightly, now interested.

“You speak, girl?”

“Yes, Sir,” I called out, suddenly nervous, they were looking at maps we had created, ones that we had called uninhabited with my council, were they comparing notes?

“Well, do you have a name?”

“Feimin,” I barked, Leulin stroked his beard as I spoke. I felt very suddenly like meat.

            “Well she’s got that exotic look, and you said she wasn’t an airbender? Could have fooled me!” he chuckled at this, like it were a joke, like I were a joke.

 

            We left the port and I put on my new outfit with few raised eyebrows. It was fascinating to see how the men changed after some home cooking and an afternoon off. They play fought on the deck, I watched from the crow’s nest with Taru eating a mango and offering me slices every so often.

I kept asking him what his crew mates were doing.

“They’re trying to dance,” He laughed, pointing out the moves they were attempting, all named after animals.

“Why are they showing off?” I asked as I nibbled on a mango and Taru shrugged

“The commander seemed to be in good spirits after a few hours of rest, and they’re just excited to be home, and when the commander is happy…”

“We’re happy,” I finished and we both chuckled and slowly faded into a sigh.

            After the commanders dismissed me, they called in the officers, including Taru to work out a plan for the next tour. We would be heading deep into the fire nation and then to the central coast, as there was talk of a rebellion in one of the colonies. The other ship was headed south and Leulin was offering our maps and wanted my confirmation that they were complete.

They watched me as I pored over the incomplete notes, passing them off as the genuine artifact. Taru wasn’t sure what their comments to me meant, but he told me to be cautious.

“You can’t really offer them much anymore, you have to be careful,” He reminded me, again and again. When I went to retire for the evening, he told me that if I needed anything, he would have my back. That was a comfort; a fire bender to have your back was probably as good an ace in the hole as you could score.


	9. Part nine

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Min sees the Fire nation for what it is.

**_IX_ **

 

            The next morning, to my surprise, we were docked and the smaller ship was deployed. Taru and several other crewmembers were running a mission.

            I went to the mess hall and got strange looks, so I sat away from most and ate my noodles as my nose ran from the heat. Soon, one of the grunts sat next to me with his loaded tray and gave me a speculative look.

“We’re gonna be stopping to drop you off, did you know that?”

I stared at him with noodles hanging from my mouth, surprised. With a great slurp, then wince, I told him that I didn’t know, also I asked him why and he shrugged.

“The Commander said that you weren’t gonna be with us anymore, then Lieutenant Taru went with him to find out more. You didn’t know?”

            I stared at him for a long while, yesterday he had been running around on the deck perfecting his phoenix flight, and now he seemed so concerned for me. I shook my head as I glanced around at everyone else, all giving me unsure glances in my direction.

“Well then, It was nice meeting you Feimin,” He dropped his chopstick and gave me the fire nation salute, I responded with the same.

            Not two hours later I was blind sided with the sound of my door opening and Taru bursting in unannounced.

He looked panicked, and I had no idea why.

“Feimin, I’m so sorry, I had no idea about any of this,” He shouted at me as I sat at my writing desk poring over a firebending scroll. I stood in surprise but soon; he was wrapped around me in an embrace.

“I tried but they already had plans, I’m so sorry,”

I was stiff as he held me and pulled away, he looked very apologetic.

“I don’t know what you mean,” I stammered and he took me around and told me to change, that he would keep my things safe, that he had a plan. I could barely hear him; everything seemed to be moving so quickly and like a typhoon, moving around me flinging what I knew away from me in all directions.

            I followed him to the deck where they kept the landing boats and the commander’s assistant, whose name I’ve forgotten placed me in the boat. I looked around at Taru, only to notice his hands clenched tight and sparking with flame.

            I stared at him, dumb founded as the ship disembarked, and we left, running up a river deep into the heart of the fire nation. Others watched me leave from the upper decks of the ship.

            The assistant told me that I would be an ambassador of sorts, like a social liaison. He told me that citizens of the fire nation wished to know more about the world they so desperately wanted to help into a brighter future. As he explained, some of the Fire Nations wealthiest citizens wished to know how they could help the other nations but were too afraid of war to travel. I did not bother pointing out the hypocrisy in this thought as he continued to feed me his pitch.

“You will shape the foundations of our relationship with the other nations, people will see you and know we are actually helping people! And tell me, Feimin, is that not what you have been trying to do?”

            His words struck a cord with me. My sentimentality won out over my reason. I agreed, albeit under duress from the beating sun and my thick dress, but the assistant took me at my word. We docked, and attendants wearing costumes who called themselves sages, took me from the world I was beginning to know and thrust me feet first into one I was not anticipating.

 

* * *

 

            When you take a peak at the under workings of the Fire nation, it is clear that no nation will ever be able to attain the same self narrative, strength, steadfastness, they just ooze the ego of a superpower. The country is divinely motivated, with the spirit world’s call to unite the world under a single red banner, as that is truly what the world desires, though the rest of us didn’t know it yet. In schools they taught that the air nation was flexing it’s strength, that the Avatar would challenge their noble goals.

            It was a lie, but truly, it’s hard to piece the truth together when everyone had a different history they believe in. On the crown price’s twelfth birthday, they closed schools and sent up lanterns across the country, for prince Azulon to live ten thousand years. That day, the joke was that his father already had. Sozin had started the world-ending war while in his eighties, and was deep into his nineties and still scouring the world for the Avatar.

            The Commanders decided that I was to be more useful as a war prize, a parade object something called a broken airbender. This was a term they made up, but because of my grey eyes, most believed them. Their story goes that I was born without the power, though it was well known all true airbenders were spiritual enough to airbend.

            In reality this was the perversion of my oldest dream. I was once excited to run away to join the air nomads, perhaps as some acolyte, but no, I was their macabre shrunken head, mounted like a trophy for the wealthy to gawk and coo at.

I made it to the capital and was left there, for weeks noblemen offered to buy me for their intrigues, and eventually my handlers couldn’t turn down the money.

            When you become the cog in the great-complicated underbelly of the Fire nation, the glamour is scratched away to reveal the rust and dents. I regretted every decision I’d made until those moments left alone in my fake, lavish prison cell. My scars were now accepted as a part of my story.

“Mistaken for a bender!” They claimed as they strutted me about parties,” Come and see! It was her people we won against, “ and “Isn’t she something!”

            I was dressed in oranges and yellows amongst a sea of red. Sometimes, they painted an arrow on my head, and other times, they covered my face in powder so thick and white, I almost looked to be made of porcelain. My handlers names were Zheng and Jun he, they made sure I was always presentable and silent; they threatened me with burnings if I ever told anyone the truth. They looked like fire nation elite, with golden amber eyes, fine, jet-black hair and strong bending.

            These months of lavish parties and fine gowns are barren memories. They speak only of the awfulness of the Fire nation, truly the worst parts of the people on those volcanic Islands. They are so insulated from reality that they’d rather pay to be shown a lie if it would make them sleep better at night. They would tell of dangerous fighting forces and narrow victories— lies to thank their Lord, happy as they knelt and bowed to his statues and likenesses. It’s enough to make someone sick to their stomach.

            Once I even was lead into the throne room of the Fire nation, and there, the young prince sat on his father’s throne, watching me with peevish joy. His face was ugly and twisted in the light of glowing flames from the flame wall. He was a very powerful bender, even at thirteen, and he wore fine clothes, styled with gold. He received me along with his mother, a rather young woman who looked like she was ill. Azulon snorted at me when they sat me down for tea and his mother glanced over to him.

“You look like a peasant,” He giggled and I stared at them both, unable to speak, Jun he cracked his knuckles, but it was a threat only I could hear.

I bowed low, my hair fell to the floor and he snorted.

“How did it feel when my father killed all of your people?”

            I learned, slowly, the feeling of words that no one is really supposed to say. They hurt like a burn does, because the wounds never truly heal, just fade until the only one who knows that they hurt, is you.

            Eventually the pain dulled to a distant ache and then it calcified into despair. Once I lost hope, watching my world of red bleed around me was easy. Hope makes it hard to face the difficulties of the future, with my mind clear of nothing but the present. Like this, it was only one unpleasant word, one unasked for touch, one misinformed move against me that I had to deal with. I could rest inside my head, it was as large and as empty as I could imagine and nothing could touch me there.

I was never further from the sprits while being masqueraded as their strongest believer.

            None of this could prepare me for when someone outside my trashing cage remembered my existence, and the reality that he had never actually forgotten about me. For all my layers I built to protect my sanity I was shocked by the reemergence of Taru. He was freshly appointed to Captain with his own ship and crew.

            When I first saw him, it was embarrassing, everything from my clothes to the style of my makeup was picked for me. The ball I was attending had me set on a table, like I were the main coarse. Seeing him in his captain’s robes with a gold trimmed binder around his topknot was like seeing a ghost. And when he saw me, well I should say the pain in his face was enough to stop the roar of the room. The moments dragged on as he stared at me, some unexplored boundless terror evident in every large and small expression he had.

            Moments later he moved to Jun he and then Zheng, I watched him negotiate. from a brief look I could tell what he was doing, he was freeing me.

            He did so by marrying me, as that was the only way he could convince my handlers that I was worth enough to part with. On my wedding night I was reunited with the clothes he had bought from he long ago and they felt like the longest awaited embrace I could have ever asked for.

            I remember removing the awful cakey make-up, the one that I’d long desired to hide my scars, with unbridled joy. In those moments, I was free, and seeing my true face in the mirror, scars and all was invigorating. I inspected my face, framed by brown hair damp with water, lying limply past my shoulders. I looked so tired, I looked like my mother, but I was me again.


	10. part ten

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Min meets someone from her past.

**_X_ **

            Taru didn’t explain much as I sat in the captain’s chair and stared out the windows onto the harbor as I awaited some kind of response from him. After we parted, I was taken to a port city and two strange, well dressed men bathed me, perfumed me and began their march of the relics of war, I was gawked at, along with staffs and gliders, necklaces with ornate symbols, even strange toys, all from the air temples. The money was split between the two commanders, as I was essentially an airbender.

            It felt so false to be taken out of the curse by someone who had watched idly as it happened but soon, he broke his silence to me. It took him a very long time to gather his words.

“Min, I’m responsible for this,”

There wasn’t an apology, it was far more direct. I sat up to look at him, and from what I could tell, he was crying. And that sight always disgusted me.

“You, you aren’t responsible,” I said, not even believing myself, but as he looked around at me, there was a pang of familiarity. Those eyes read a poisonously familiar gaze, one that I’d sworn to never forget.

“Those scars, those scars on your face, you ran away from a fire bender when he was… while he was…” He swallowed his words; I felt my knees growing weak. It couldn’t be him, I wanted to tell him it couldn’t have been him,

“He ran away, but he didn’t leave, he stayed in the forest until he could move again. I saw everything you did until I found what was left of my unit ” He paused, steadying himself on the helm, “I never thought I would see you again,”

            I was shaking, my whole body was vibrating, felt nauseous, what he was saying seemed so impossible, and yet. I thought back and everything was the same, his brown eyes, his facial hair, the concerned, furrowed brow, and the indescribable expression. I never got the clearest look, but he would have seen me, memorized the shade of my eyes, seen me as a young girl trying to save her family.

“You ran toward us in that village and I knew you immediately. All those years before I watched your mother drag you from the flames, I saw that you were—“

And what possessed me to stand, on quaking knees, swallowing hard against the bile building in my throat, walk toward him and smack him across the face mid sentence was a power I will never fully understand.

            Taru stood stunned for a moment, and I took the chance to steady myself on the wheel, agog. We were still for what felt like hours, my hand stung with the shock of the blow. When he once again looked at me, he looked ill and unmistakably beaten.

“I don’t forgive myself,”

“I could never,” I interrupted spitefully, but after a moment he continued.

“I don’t want to be forgiven, don’t worry, I’ve spent these last few years atoning for my actions in the hope that you would be off to something better,”

These were well-intoned words but the virulence inside me, which had been festering to loathing, would not calm. For months I’d been a plaything, an object, and he had the gall to talk about something better. I moved away from him and he followed me with his eyes.

“Better? Better what about this is better? When you found me, did you think for one moment that you might not be saving me? Did you think, oh perhaps I’ll only be making it worse, that my entire civilization may just see her as a relic?”

My voice was practically a shout by the end, he didn’t seem to be able to speak, but he eventually eked out a horse no.

“No, oh of coarse not because I’m just some back-woods broken airbender with scars from your war. From you. I needed to be civilized, is that it? Are these clothes your way of beating one more nation, person by person, into the dust?”

These words were so violent; they almost didn’t seem like mine, the young spitfire I had been was finding her voice again.

“They trained us, and told us we were saving our people, they told us if we deserted, they would kill us all,” He countered and I was shaking hard, once again.

“You defend killing a baby with that? You would be dead? I watched you kill an innocent woman and her child, then you came for me,”

“I was sixteen Min, I had no idea what was going on” He shouted this, there was the hint of a thousand nights of contemplation of this truth, “You will never understand how they twisted our minds to justify this,”

“And you will never understand what you brought onto the world,” I shouted back at him, “You can't blame me for hating what your kind did, you destroyed the balance of the world to advance your agenda, to impose your beliefs on everyone else!”

"Do you think I'm proud of this!" sounding genuinely horrified at the prospect, I was seeing red, I spoke without thinking.

"Don't you dare tell me you're the victim of this," My voice was low, threatening, I cold feel it making him squirm, "You kept this from me, for years, you hid the truth because you knew how I would react. You don't get to decide that your actions are defensible all of a sudden!"

“You opened my eyes, Min” He interjected taking a step to me. The way he spoke made me loathe him, as though I had never seen him before. Every facet of who I thought he was, was now shining through new light. His memories were tainted by the burns scoured into my skin and still he looked at me with an expression I’d not seen in what felt like a lifetime of disgusted looks: compassion.

            This was enough to set me off. I became tense; I lunged for a spear resting along the wall. He watched I did so, and passively lifted his hands.

“You would kill me?” he asked and I squeezed the shaft of the spear and considered.

“What would your life mean against the thousands of others,”

“Nothing,” He said, before his hand moved deliberately to his captain’s emblem.

“Except perhaps to make you a wanted criminal,”

We stood off against one another for a time, but eventually he dropped his hands and shrugged.

“It would feel so good, Taru,” I told him, “I just want to stop hearing them scream”

His hands twitched, and that reminded me that he could kill me too, burn me to embers leave me for the cleaners to find in the morning. But I trusted him not to kill me before I could kill him.

“Maybe when you kill me,” He choked on his words, a sob shuddering in his chest, the noise twisted as a knife in my gut, “maybe we’ll both stop hearing them,”

            This led to a long pause, and I glanced out to the dark harbor lit only by moonlight. In that moment we were mortal enemies, maybe that’s how we should have always been. Perhaps ‘should’ is comforting but the world isn’t made of best case scenarios, it’s made of moments and decisions made with never enough time to consider the consequences.

When I looked up into his eyes, I saw no killer, as much as I wanted to.

I lowered the spear from his neck and looked away.

“I want to leave, now,” I said and he called for the main engines to be fired. We remained silent for a while; I was still holding the spear.

“I realize there isn’t much comfort here, but you’re safe,”

I wanted to laugh but I couldn’t, I tossed the spear away and wandered away from him, and for a long time, he did not bother following.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  [X](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0AKCne5vvaQ)


	11. Part eleven

**_XI_ **

            Prisons come in all shapes and sizes, so I learned, and Taru seemed to be a prison in and of himself. His crew was young and green; most were fire benders though he had a few non-benders who made up the special weapons force. His ship had riding rhinos and they had a devoted staff to care for them. This ship was smaller than the Commanders but not by very much, it took days of wandering to see that. We were headed on a tour to the northern coasts of the Earth kingdom to fight. The recruits would talk to each other a good deal and from what I over heard, they were quite young, probably no more than babies when their nation destroyed the air nomads.

            Some were older, however, several Lieutenants, the cooks, the mechanical staff to tend to the engines. Some even knew of me as the broken airbender. Most promotions within the Fire Nation were the results of power, so often times, Lieutenant was the highest rank some benders ever achieved, at least in the navy, thus several of them under Taru captainship were gray-haired and grizzled, and interested in swapping stories.

            I listened mostly, and plotted ways to escape and find freedom. Most didn’t talk much with me, certainly not even slightly flirtatiously, which I had gotten from time to time on the other ship. Mostly I just spent my time thinking without duress from people. Taru was right about the peace and quiet, but prisons just give you time to reflect inwardly as you stare at the free world beyond you.

            I found myself many times standing on the deck over the waves at a very late hour hoping no one would discover me, only to have Taru hot on my heels.

            He didn’t bother me at all. We also never bothered having a real ceremony, he just signed some paperwork and left me to my own devices. Really the whole thing seemed hilariously accurate for my life. Fall in love with an airbender, end up married to a firebender.

Furthermore, Taru just left me to his room and he slept elsewhere on the command deck, often in different places. The only times he was in my room was when he meditated at his shrine and when we took dinner away from the crew.

            Dinners were usually quiet, but we did speak eventually. I asked him about his family, and he would tell me about his parents, and that he came from some money. None of it surprised me much but it did make me wonder why he wasn’t already married. I suppose I already knew the reason though.

            We eventually got to those more familiar questions, along with comments on the Fire Nation, often treasonous in his case. He hated the war, it turned out, and he hated fighting, but he was good at it. It was a very strange problem benders must have to confront.

            Nonbenders have so much range to their lives, they never need to study their arts or be molded by them, our conversations keyed me into a perspective had never been privy to. Benders have to find control or they become slaves to their elements. I learned that in the Fire nation, fire benders are conscripted to the military as soon as they develop because fire is dangerous, and the best way to fight danger, is to focus it.

            “Sozin had this belief that if we didn’t expand, our nation would destroy itself with progress, and considering how backward most nations are, it really isn’t a bridge too far that we were doing the world a favor,”

He explained, as we meditated together, “Of coarse Avatar Roku didn’t like that because it would upset the balance of the world,”

“Of course,” I say, as we’ve retread this many times, but he continued.

“But, Sozin had no reason to care about balance in the long run, think about it, rulers only wish to tend to the needs of their nations, with Roku out of the way, and a dozen years, the New Avatar could be dispatched without issue, then give his nation another dozen years to do it all again, this time with the water benders.”

“In fifty years, absolute victory,” I finished

“Exactly,”

“Easier said than done,” I retorted and rolled back to stand, I worked through fire bending strike poses to stretch my stiff limbs, he watched me with a smirk.

“He’s still wandering around the world looking for that child,”

“He isn’t a child anymore he’d be almost,” I counted up from my age, "He'd (we decided on he) be almost twenty eight.”

“Right,” He said with a sigh, “He’s between us in age, I forget that.”

            The weeks became months and slowly I trusted Taru enough to join me on long walks around the ships’ decks while his crew slept. This would become somewhat of a tradition for us. I’d walk slightly before him and whenever I’d pause to look at the stars or moon, he’d stop too, at a respectable distance. He didn’t speak much, and neither did I. How strange we must have looked to the helmsman, we rarely said a word. Though once I recall there was a spectacular meteor shower.

We watched and wished together for hours, and then finally when I was too exhausted to stand, he asked me what I’d wished for.

“I can’t say, it won’t come true,” I said, as plainly as I could. Taru nodded as we entered the quarterdeck.

“I wished for you to be free.”

I remember catching the last moment of his expression for these words, knowing we’d been hoping for the same thing even though I’d never admit it to him.

            I told myself that when I left I’d be happy to never see him again. Thoughts like these changed from “when” to “if” but in that moment, for the first time, the wish almost became a lie. One I was telling myself to make it easier to sleep at night.


	12. Part twelve

**_XII_ **

 

            Months of preparation were finally complete, Taru’s crew were prepared for his first official deployment, his soldiers fought their nerves as they stood in formation and in their full spiny uniforms of the lower decks. I had watched them by Taru’s side as he listened to their unit officer who would be actually leading the battle.

            As a naval officer he didn’t need to leave the ship for any reason, but he did need to coordinate with other naval officers to help in cases of heavy barrage with the use of the trebuchet. It was covered in tarps on the deck to avoid rusting, but it’s presence often reminded me of the siege on my town, and the fracas which lead me to this ship.

            I stayed out of all planning, I only watched as they hovered over garrison maps swiped by successful spies or plotted the changes in coarse with small figurines painted green and red for easy identification.

            All my life it seemed odd to be boiled down to one color, considering how no one wore exclusively green but the solders that were being trained. The fire nation seemed to only own one shade of dye, but the Earth nation was diverse and varied. Most of my childhood I only wore my most brilliant greens on special occasions, and those were lost in the fire. I suppose I would have much rather worn orange and yellow anyway.

Taru explained that the west coast was the some of the most dangerous terrain in the world, killer swamps, badlands and sheer cliffs. The southeastern coast was beachy, but as we traveled to the point where the battle was, I noticed the sheer cliffs and mountain ranges; it made me remember my home.

            The bay had dozens of Fire navy ships and one with a huge pagoda, which I realized was a royal ship. Taru stared at it from the bridge and his Lieutenants crystalized their coarse of action. Staring at him framed by the hulls of a dozen fire navy ships, adorned in his black and crimson uniform, it was strange to know what was going on in his head. He was Intelligent, a talented fire bender, devoted to his crew, and yet he just as trapped as I was. I shifted my attention instead to the shore, which was dotted with Earth kingdom flags, all flapping south in the wind.

            The night before the battle no one could sleep, I couldn’t even sleep despite the fact that I wouldn’t be participating. Taru meditated, and his candles grew and waned with each in and exhale. I had watched him many times preform this ritual, as if he were attempting to trance into the spirit world. He was a powerful bender, which I could have told you as a young girl as his fire invaded my nightmares and his people warped the world around me. At no point would I have ever expected to see a battle from his side, to see the war from the instigators. I hated the country for keeping me prisoner all these years, hated that it left me scared. But as much as I wanted to, I couldn’t only hate the man who did it. It was an unpleasant feeling I felt when I looked at him from time to time, but it wasn’t the only one. It was muddled in so many others that I wasn’t sure it was even the most important.

            I fell asleep late in the night and when I woke up in a panic, I noticed that I was under the covers of my bed. I jumped up and out of my bunk, and soon found the officers making their final rounds.

* * *

 

            I watched from the bridge as we landed, as the prow lowered to the ground with many other ships and the troops came out, some armed, most only with their bending. Behind them the riding rhinos were mounted and they lumbered off the ships with their wide five toed feet slipping slightly on the metal. Taru told me it would be safer in my cabin but I wanted to watch, I kept my hands busy with a pair of pants that I was mending as the battle began.

            It was clear, the assault was very one sided. Earth benders front lines broke through the fire’s lines within minutes; Taru and his crew were quick to begin using the Trebuchet

            The very nice earth bender uniforms, green and gold and practically glittering in the sun, pushed on, and started landing huge boulders on the ships. The assault became a scramble.

            Taru was on the deck when a huge bolder tore through the starboard side and breeched the inner hull. I was thrown sideways and the bridge and wheelhouse were filled with warning bells blaring wildly. I righted myself as the helmsman started to scramble. Taru ran into the bridge looking exhausted and frightened.

“How bad is it?” he asked as he observed the chaos, one of his advisors looked grim.

“We’re taking on too much water, we’re in shallow water but she’s going to sink.”

“Did we lose anyone,” He asked again quickly, I stared at them silently, also watching as the undamaged fire navy ships began to pull away.

“Unsure captain,” He said and Taru sighed then said

“We’ll find out if we did, come on Sung, Wei, We need to move,”

He gave me the briefest of looks before stopping, and then directed his assistant to get off the ship.

“Everyone, abandon ship,”

The distraught looks of his crew turned to panic.

“Sir, they’ll kill us,” One offered meekly but he had made up his mind

“They will have to capture you first, if you have the option of life take it. We’re close enough to shore to make it, if you can get to another one of the ships fast enough I suggest you do.”

“And what about me!” I shouted, drawing a few looks “What do you expect me to do?”

In two movements he was across the room, and his large hands cradled around the back of my head and pulled me into a hug. The crew that had not scrambled at the abandon ship command glanced away awkwardly. I felt him turn us to address someone.

"Hong take her, make she she gets off this boat."

His assistant Hong, who was close at my side, stopped his retreat and nodded dutifully.

“Survive,” he said, something in his voice lingered, just as it had the night we met when we both were but children in our own separate worlds, “Like you always do!”

He kissed my forehead and was off, his goal was to save his men as the ship was going down, mine was to escape.

            Hong was like an acrobat when it came to the ship but I was not nearly as nimble. We scaled down the rungs of the escape ladder and once on the main deck we narrowly avoided being hit by another large boulder, which brought a huge moan from the already fatally wounded ship. I stared down at the hole it had created, hoping beyond hope that it hadn’t made it lower than the upper decks of the bow.

Hong urged me on, as his focus was super human. He shot a jet of fire at the water and watched to see how long it took to dissipate on the waves below. He frowned and looked back at me.

“Can you swim?”

“Are you telling me to jump?” I asked, surprised and he shook my arm

“I’m asking, Missus, can you swim?”

“I can,” I said softly, and that was as much as he needed. He grabbed one of the life saver rings with its attached rope and threw it around me, he then leapt in the air, and over the railing.

            I gasped and watched him fall over the ship, but then saw how he aimed a few sharp bursts of flame to slow his fall. There was an incredibly advanced firebending form to maintain a jet of fire for flight. This was the slap dash version, and it was clear that Hong was improvising.

            When he surfaced I looked up at me and waved, but before I could jump, I noticed the Earth bending ships drawing close from the shore, drawing in on our ship, of all places. I was frozen with fear momentarily, but Hong called me once again, and without thinking I dove.

            I didn’t have time to think as I fell, and I broke the water like a stone. The ring knocked the air from my lungs, and soon I surfaced I was coughing up water. Hong was quick to get to me, and singed my umbilical rope with his bending. One of his strong and wiry arms was looped around the ring keeping me afloat, and he yelled for me to paddle.

            The surf was high and I’d never swum in an ocean before, I kept swallowing salty water as it lapped against my face and spitting it out with a spluttering coughs. Hong used a crawling style swim and kicked his strong legs, but soon, the Earth boats that had been deployed to capture the sinking ships were near at hand and there was no hope of escape above water.

            There were a few rocks peppering over us but they still seemed to be trying to take down the ships.Hong looked to the Earth Nation boats, and me, perhaps five times before he sighed and let go of the ring.

“What are you doing, Hong? Hong!”

“They won’t kill you!” he yelled, then took a deep breath as the waves parted us. I shouted to him then watched as he dropped into the water, and jetted away with his bending. The fire caused a mass of warm bubbles to rush around me as I frantically attempted to paddle away. Despite my feeble paddling, soon one of the ships was practically on top of me.

I splashed but they positioned to attack me, disc shaped rocks poised to strike.

“Wait, she’s not a fire bender!” One said, almost surprised, and with some effort they helped me aboard.

“What on earth are you doing out here?” the one who pulled me from the waves asked as attempted to keep warm with my soaked clothes in the windy sea air.

Not that there was an easy answer for that question. They took me to shore and I watched the ship Taru was captain of sink and remain above the waves, and despite myself, I cried.


	13. Part Thirteen

**_XIII_ **

 

            This was the beginning on the siege of Hu Xin Provinces, which would be then Price Azulon’s most decisive victory over the Earth kingdom in the early years. Unfortunately for the fire troops, they decided on a disadvantageous meeting spot after weeks of good rains and unfavorable wind conditions. The loss was serious, and the Fire nation would repay this defeat in spades when the time came.

            After being captured myself, they found me a simple green frock and offered me tea. I drank at least three cups and was still weepy when one of the commanders took a moment to ask me what had happened, directly. He had a scribe, most likely looking for fire nation secrets.

“What’s your name?” He asked after I remained silent for a while.

“Min, Min-Yong,” I eventually whispered and the scribe scribbled it down quickly, the Commander sat up, frowning.

“Nice to meet you Min-Yong, My name is Commander Whey, I’m from the City of Omashu, where are you from?”

“The southern islands,” I said so quietly I was actually impressed that the scribe heard me. Commander Whey blinked, surprised.

“Of the Earth Kingdom?”

“Yes, I am from the Earth Kingdom, I am a seamstress, I used to mend your uniforms, my brother fights in your army” I said, and it felt very strange. I hadn’t said my true name around anyone but Taru in years, and I hadn’t spoken with any of my countrymen in more than five years. Whey stroked his fine beard and considered me.

“What is your brother’s name?”

“Cho, he was a messenger for a general in the south, then an infantry man. He is a nonbender with grey-green eyes,” I recited everything I had, and stared between the two, the scribe looked up at his commander, they shared a look.

“Min-Yong, do you know this General’s name?”

“Long,” I said, after a moment of recollection and the scribe frowned.

“The Northern Campaign, “ The scribe looked grim, and I nodded.

“I'm sorry to say miss, He’s dead then,”

“The entire unit perished, the mission was a failure to push pack the colonies in the northern part of the Earth Kingdom, Even General Long lost his life,”

The news made me numb. I pictured my brother’s face, his soft sweet disposition, and his perennial hope. It almost seemed fitting I should find out about his death in this way.

            The two gave me a long while to grieve, and I sat in the tent I’d been placed in in my loose frock for a long while. I could hear the commotions of soldiers, chains and even rocks moving around. It all seemed so surreal.

            The Royal Navy ship hadn’t even made landfall, now that I thought about it. The Lord or prince, who ever was over watching this campaign just watched as their troops died a pointless death, just as my brother had. The scribe came in and offered me a steamed pork bun. I didn’t have the appetite for it, so I watched him eat and nibbled at the breading.

“Did they hurt you?” The scribe eventually asked and I looked up at him, with my puffy, exhausted, scared, face.

“What do you think,” My tone seemed to dissuade him from prying further into my past. we sat in silence as he finished his meal

“The General is deciding what to do with the captured soldiers,” He said eventually, “Commander Whey could use your testimony as reason to execute them,”

            I stared at him, blankly. It seemed such an odd thing to say, so utterly tone deaf. What on earth was the point of all this death? All they seemed to be interested in was killing each other, how did my story change that? Would telling them that I wanted the war to be over stop them from doing something so heinous?

“I’m noting going to help this war, I don’t want to lose anything else,”

            In the following hour, a few soldiers escorted me to a different tent. I walked through the mud caked camp just as the rain began to run over the green encampment. The earth kingdom flags slapped and cracked in the gloomy mood of the day, several of the solders walking around glanced my way and made funny faces at me. Though times had changed, apparently the depravity of earth nation soldiers remained constant.

            I looked back to see the retreating fleet as little specks on the horizon and smoking wrecks of three or four ships in the bay. From here it was hard to tell which was the one I’d escaped from. We walked past a large forest green tent with a huge insignia emblazoned over the door flaps, and a large medical tent where only a few people were being treated. The rain picked up in intensity by the time we made it to the edge of the camp where they had the ostrich horses posted along side a temporary earthen structure where, and my heart sank as I realized, they must be keeping the Fire nation soldiers.

 I slowed momentarily, and soldiers flanking me stopped, one asked if I were all right, the other looked anxiously to the barracks.

“Yes, yes,” I said softly and continued onward, and soon, my fears were realized as we rounded the corner.

            Dozens of men, stripped of their uniforms were bowed and fettered, some completely to their necks in earthen prisons. They looked beaten and ragged, several were wailing, one or two seemed to be missing limbs. I covered my mouth, feeling nauseous at the sight, my mind recalled the scream of the Air bending woman and her child, and I turned away for a moment. I shut my eyes and looked back to the scene, I saw the scribe and Whey with several others, talking to a much older man with white hair and thick beard.

            That was the General the scribe had told me about, I figured, then followed close behind the soldier as they saluted their superior officer, then bowed myself. I realized half way through my bow that I was holding my hands in the Fire nation way, then corrected myself, sliding my fist up to my palm. As soon as I did this, I heard my name.

I turned around with a jolt, and some of the soldiers, ones that I recognized, were calling out to me in my adopted name.

“Feimin, you made it, you made it off, we thought for sure you were a goner!”

            I felt suddenly cold; one of the solders shouted for the prisoner to mind his tongue and slapped him with the mud at his feet. The familiar soldier fell to his knees, and the others quieted too. I looked away from them and back to the general, my mind was racing, and my stomach boiling.

“Here, she is the war prisoner I told you about, with the brother, she was living among them for some time, right Min-Yong?”

Whey reminded me, and I looked around the circle of people. His scribe was feverishly transcribing, the general watched me with worn eyes as he stroked his well-oiled beard, several other officers looked at me intently.

“I was. I’ve been to the ice flows in the south up into the Fire nation capital,” I glanced over my shoulder at them, these young infantrymen, so much like my brother had been. Serving a cause to not fight, but to bring back the peace he so adored.

“They clothed me, and ate with me, and taught me like I was one of their own.”

I closed my fist, feeling weak, “They also taunted me and pretended I was an airbender and led me around like I was some kind of circus side show,”

 The officers stared around uncomfortably, but the General leaned back into his earthen chair and folded his fingers over each other.

“I’ve heard enough, bring them,” he gestured, and several earth nation solders overlooking the prisoners, I turned to see a group of water logged, exhausted fire nations solders being brought before us. One of whom was Taru, limping heavily, and bleeding from his fore head. I gasped upon seeing him, but his vision looked to be severely effected by the blood, one of the boiler room attendants, whose life he must have saved, was acting as his crutch.

            Seeing him brought me hope, but I dared not single him out. I glanced around the crowd at others as if my new distraught expression was not the result of seeing a single man and I slinked back to hide amongst the officers, and to observe my husband. The General looked at the crew of my ship and then to the rest of the POW’s.

“I don’t have enough to feed one hundred prisoners of war, If you are a non bender and an infantry man stand,” The general gestured for his earth benders to scan the crowds. The officers fanned out and two-dozen or so men stood, and were led away by the troops, back toward the camp. This left the officers and firebenders, most of the military as it were. I felt my heart race, and then I felt a presence over my shoulders. It was one of the general’s attendants. He had glasses and a round face giving him an odd resemblance to a porcelain plate.

“General Hong would like me to escort you to his tent to account your experiences in the Fire nation for reconnaissance, if you would follow me,”

“Wait,” I stammered, “What about the prisoners?” I was panicking, and I knew he could tell.

He glanced to the next group being divided out, fire bending non-officers, he made a face like he smelled something most foul.

“I don’t imagine you are much for gore after what they have put you though?”

I knew he looked at my scar as he said this, and though I was cold and soaked through to the bone I wanted nothing but to stand here, and come up with some way to free them.

He moved between my sight lines of Taru, and one of the solder’s began to move, preparing a technique.

“I don’t understand, there’s nothing I can say to stop this?”

He looked at me and turned around to see what I was staring at, he had narrow inquisitive eyes, and something about my expression spoke to him before I could.

He narrowed his eyes, and at that point they almost looked closed.

“Help me, I’ll give you all the information I have, please, I can’t let these men die,”

He inspected me, from my ruined sandals to my rain-drenched frock, and perhaps he pitied me, perhaps he wanted me to help. I was never quite sure.

“General Hong, Sir,” He asked, and the general tilted his head to see his assistant.

“What,”

“The lady has vital information about these prisoners,” He lied smoothly, and I poked out from behind him, the General looked at me, as did the soldiers bending a bolder large enough to crush someone. I swallowed hard.

“Yes, yes Sir, about the battle fleet, but you have to let these men go,”

The officers looked around at each other, confused, and several laughed. The general did not find my comment amusing, and I noticed Taru staring at me, he had heard my voice. He had a look of resigned hope.

“You can’t be serious,” He growled at me and I clenched my fist.

“I want to help you, but they took care of me for years, I can’t let you kill them,”

Whey stood up against me.

“Miss, it was men like these who are responsible for the death of thousands, hundreds of thousands, their death will be one step closer to finding peace,”

I shook my head, and I wanted to retort but before I could, cuffs of stone were clamped around my wrists and I was pulled back by one of the soldiers.

“I’m tired of this, men kill these fire nation pigs,”

“No, please!” I cried out and the soldiers looked at me, as did many of the gathered prisoners. I struggled against the restraints, before the general’s scribe looked back to the prisoners then to me. After a moment of consideration, he ran to his general side.

“We have to have someone corroborate her story sir,” he said, loud enough for me to hear, my heart started to pound.

“Fine,” He said annoyed, “Pick one, I don’t care, get her out of here!” The soldier dragged me back, but I looked wildly between the scribe and the line up, He followed my eyes between him and Taru and I did the only thing I could think to do.

“Taru!” I shouted and his head reflexively looked at me. The soldier covered my mouth and dragged me out of the area; my last look was to the general and his scribe staring at line up together, faces stern and unforgiving.

 


	14. Part Fourteen

**_XIV_ **

            I sat alone and cold, soldiers posted at the entrance of an otherwise empty earthen shelter constructed for me. I looked at them every so often but they seemed bored and had created a checkers game to play as we waited for the scribe. I felt sick and wanted to pace. I had no idea what to do, or think I just wanted everything thing to return to normal, but the more I thought about my normal, the less I knew what I wanted it to be.

            I was a prisoner in many ways all throughout my life, tied to land and an identity I didn’t want, latched onto a culture I despised. People who knew nothing about me stole me and worked me for their side of the war and I spent my time there defending all I’d known from afar. I was taken and used and abused, and then saved, but here I was again, waiting in a cell.

“You know you’re a pretty good prisoner,” I sighed to myself, “well, I’ve gotten a lot of practice.”

            There was a noise outside the tent and I looked up eagerly, my stomach in knots. The soldiers didn’t jump up, and then I saw an Ostrich horse scurry past and rested back against the wall.

            I covered my face and kicked the mud at my feet angrily; I was already caked in mud so there wasn’t much to worry about. My mind ran with conversations about the sky from my brother, and I could make out a small sliver in the hole at the top of the tent but it was an overcast night from the rain, and it never felt like the clouds would part.

There was another noise, and this time, the soldiers stood, and I leapt up too, my heart racing in the worst way.

“He’s weak, we’ll question them tomorrow,” It was another soldier speaking, one I didn’t recognize.

The men keeping an eye on me stood to let someone pass inside. He was thrown inside and crumpled to the floor, his jet black hair fell around his head, I realized after a moment, the reason he had fallen, his leg was severely broken.

            I dove to his side and pulled him up onto my lap, then turned him as gently as I could. Before I could see his face, from his smell, I knew it was him. I had never held Taru like this, so his weight was strange to me, and he was weak but I could feel his muscles under the fabric of his shirt. I pushed the mud and blood from his face and touched his cheek, stuck in a placid expression.

“You’re fine,” I sighed, “I have you, you’re safe,”

            He didn’t respond, and I kissed him on the temple, at least that got him flinch unexpectedly. I laughed when he did, and kissed him there again, and for the second time in as many days, I wept.

            When we woke up in the black pre-dawn he was not well, as he had lost so much blood, but the pain kept him from sleeping. Most of the night, I didn’t bother trying to either. We woke before the scribe came in, and the tent had been closed so we couldn’t escape. I looked around, but didn’t dare move, I didn’t want to disturb him in his sleep.

            In the night I had reasoned that Taru had saved me more than once before, but I had saved him too. He told me that it was my daring to stand up to him for my family, which made him never take a life again and work overtime to become an officer. Now in my arms, I was in charge of making the debts square. I had to wake him eventually, and when he stirred I told him that I had to set his bone if he ever wanted to walk again. Through the pain he still had good humor.

“But that would mean I don’t get to lay on you anymore,”

I responded by gently pushing him off my lap. He grunted and agreed that he deserved that.

            I ripped strips from the bottom of my dress until the skirt hem kissed my knees. I moved to his legs and told him to ball some cloth in his mouth. He asked me nervously if I’d ever done this before.

“I watched my mother do it a few times, I mostly just dabbed their foreheads,”

“That’s not really comforting,” He grumbled and I shrugged.

I gave him to the count of three, but as soon as I reached two, I lurched back and pushed the bone back into place.

He shouted, but after a moment he breathed raspy uneven breaths then gripped onto my knee as I wrapped his leg as tenderly as I could.

“You are going to tell them about the Fire nation forces,” He said, and I nodded, with fabric dangling from my mouth.

“You don’t know anything, and they’ll have tortured my crew for information,”

            I looked at him, I didn’t know what to tell him, I didn’t want him to know the extent of the deal I had cut. I had no idea how he would take the sacrifice of his crew or that I chose to save his life, and many were now dead because of that. Dwelling on it hurts, it does even now.

“I’m working on that, saving you was my priority,”

He may have flushed if he had enough blood but he was still very concerned for his men.

“I have never heard of the Earth kingdom keeping a firebender long, you are saving me at every turn.”

“You say that like I had a choice,” I said, laughing at the thought as I tied off his bandage, and he made me look at him, I felt strange when he did so.

“You always have that choice, you don’t owe me anything,” I could feel his fingers twisting into my hair, “You never have,”

            In that moment my mind raced for a solution, I pulled his hand through my hair and watched as the matted locks fell through his fingers. The cogs of my mind were working double time. For once in my life, freedom was only one element away.          

I had the plan solidified by the time Yuan entered, the name of the scribe who had saved Taru’s life, and was now tasked with my official report. Seeing how I was a non-threat, I was removed first while an earth bender entrapped Taru, though he didn’t have much will to fight. He would be left in the tent until Yuan returned to hear the rest of the story, knowing full well we could have both come up with one together in the mean time.

            I planned on them having a fail safe, which was the other scribe belonging to Whey who had interviewed me for my story earlier. He would know if I had not been somewhere, as he knew what I had already told him. This left the only information, which was my secret intelligence. Yuan offered me a sweet roll for breakfast, but I wasn’t hungry, and I tucked in in my pocket, along with the bun from yesterday.

            I was sat down in front of Yuan as he pulled out a long scroll and affixed it to a slab of wood and looked up at me, poised to write.

“The Prince of the fire nation,” I began without any ceremony, “Was at the front lines, his ship was in your harbor mere days ago."

Yuan looked at me, frowning. The other scribe tilted his head, curiously.

“What does that mean?” The other scribe asked and Yuan shot him a dirty look.

“It means we missed a golden opportunity buffoon, just think of what that old kook Sozin would have done to return his only heir,” He looked back at me, “Which ship?”

“A fast one,” I said clearly, though not technically a lie, it was hardly a satisfying answer, as I suspected, a scribe would be unfamiliar with ship designs.

“The general should know this,” The other scribe confirmed, but Yuan pressed on.

“You know more about him, continue,” He urged and I did, making sure to throw the other scribe a bone.

“I met the prince briefly once, he is very shrewd, and cruel, like I told you,” I nodded to the other scribe and he nodded, Yuan scribbled with delicate flicks of his well-trained wrist.

“He would make it look like he was leaving, but they are looking to regroup, It wouldn’t surprise me if they were going attack soon. You captured some of their Captains,”

This made Yuan narrow his eyes, but I remained calm, hoping beyond hope he couldn’t find the lie amongst the two truths. But even if he did, he had someone else to worry about.

“We must inform the General, immediately!” The other scribe reiterated, and he left to do just that; this left Yuan and me.

“I’ll be back, I’m going to confirm your story, stay here,”

            And with that, and a suspicious look, he was gone. And soon I was too. The fabric tent had slack between the back poles and I slipped out unnoticed and ran through the still dark encampment until I came across the Ostrich horses from the day before, all brushed and free of their heavy combat armor. With years caring for an ostrich horse, I knew their tender spots under their wings and below their beaks.

            After a few waking strokes, I tempted one with my roll then the bun I’d saved from the day before. Soon, with a few gentle rubs, we were best friends. I hoisted myself up and darted out past the other sleeping beasts of burden.

            I remembered the way, even in the dark, and made sure to grab a mallet as I left the armaments. At the entrance of my tent were two guards, and past the open door Yuan was talking with Taru, who would tell him everything but…

“You there!” I heard, slightly before I expected, but I was still ready. I rushed them on the ostrich horse, and as they bent at us the creature leapt past this with well-practiced, military training. With his scaly robust feet he landed hard on top of the two and smashed their heads together, leaving them out cold. To my benefit, they had left a block high enough for even the injured Taru to climb up.

            Yuan watched, dumbfounded, as I helped my husband up and dropped his tablet as I thanked him for saving Taru’s life, adding that I thought it fair to do him the same courtesy.

            It was dark as we raced away from the camp; Taru was behind me, fighting exhaustion as his arms loosely jostled around me, under us the Ostrich horse managed through the wilds of the western earth kingdom. We ran until the sun was well past high in the sky and after a quick refuel, we continued on.

            Though the terrain was wild, I felt at peace, and from time to time,I noticed creatures, spirits of the forest. At times when my courage faltered, I felt them watching me and I realized they were urging me on. They believed in me, and after all this time, after my youth in the places where sprits had escaped from, to the forest so thick with spiritual energy that the ostrich horse hardly had to touch the ground as he ran.

            I was free, and we were running, running far and fast away from any captor I had ever known. Taru needed help that no self respecting earth kingdom doctor would give him. So by the direction of the sun and stars, tricks I had picked up from the Fire navy, I found us to the only place in the world where we, as we were, might actually be free. The Fire nation colony of Yu Dao.

            It was walled from all accounts, but it was more relaxed in politics than both nations combined and had serious iron working that Taru could do. When we made it there, I told them I sought asylum, that we were prisoners of war and we just needed a place to be free. The woman at the gate seemed surprised, but slid me some under-the-table papers and turned a blind eye as we entered.

            The next months in Yu Dao, Taru stayed mostly in a hospital receiving medicinal soups and herb wraps from experienced healers with water bender training. I stayed by him each night, and cleaned his stitches, as it was one of the few parts I understood. When he could walk again, he had a limp, and had to walk with a cane but it was fine, we were together, and we were safe


	15. part 15

 

**_XV_ **

 

            After years we found our footing, pretended to be happy when Fire lord Azulon took the throne from his ancient father. We wore white the day of his funeral pyre while secretly celebrating in hopes that the war was about to change for the less cruel.

            In realty, Azulon was just as cold and shrewd as I had perceived him to be all those years before. With no Avatar to keep him in check, the world was waded in the deepest years of warfare it had ever seen. The steel mills worked overtime, and I opened a bar for men to relax and chat. I even hired a few young women to take over most of the day as I prepared strange earth kingdom broths which my customers often complained weren’t spicy enough, but ate all the same as they tasted like home.

            Taru and I pretend for a very long tome to want different lives. We thrust ourselves into our work and saw little of each other in the day. That was until I found myself pregnant. We joked with our ordinary fire nation friends that it was a terrible accident.

“Unintended, completely,” Taru said with his deadpan frown, I smiled through a woven fan, my eyes trained on him.

I had Choshu, named for my brother and Taru’s Father Shujo who had died at the hands of a factory explosion instigated by free Earth nation fighters in the colony of which his father had been the governor.

           The water tribes, now being targeted, fought savagely in the north and south. Azulon had given up his father’s fool’s errand of finding the Air avatar and decided to find it’s reincarnation among the water benders. Water benders were being targeted, and captured, especially in the south.

            News from the war was never welcome, we tried to live our lives away from the destruction, teach our son that in wars, there are no victories, no winners, no rightful causes, only the living and the dead.

            As a young child, I saw the world as peaceful, but now I saw nothing but war, and I wanted so much more for Choshu. Taru and I would take him with us on day hikes and little adventures, we would show him, even as a toddler that there was beauty in even the darkest places.

           During that time, Taru and I were as close as ever, and it wasn’t very surprising when I found out I was pregnant with our daughter Akane. Having a daughter was strange, it was as if staring into a lens, though slightly distorted, and seeing yourself.  She was born three years after her older brother, and from the moment she was born, Taru and I knew she was special. She had dark hair at birth, and within a few days her eyes settled to her father’s shade of amber brown. She was a firebender, like Taru, and she showed promise from a young age. It was a shock, but when you have a child you know all shocks are so new to you. You want to be afraid, but you are so proud something so remarkable could come from you.

            Her brother was an artist, and curious. He spent hours coming up with songs and dance routines, while his sister, well she shined through her bending quickly, but both Taru and I were afraid of what that would bring us. He devoted all the time he could to teaching her to value her mind over her might. He wasn’t nimble anymore, in fact he was rather slow, both of his children could run circles around him and routinely did, but he commanded their attention, and they adored him.

            Though I was no longer a young women as my children grew, they brought youth back to me as they ran off to school in their uniforms and brought back creations celebrating half of their heritage. I would wake them every morning, fix Akane’s fine hair then prepare breakfast for the three of us. Taru would wake up and make his own meals, and he would meet me on my walk back to our home. He worked in the steal mill, supervising and he would meditate in the hills every morning, and I would join him as I learned to clear my mind as well.

            And life went on, and I learned that my home was what freedom looked like from inside the cage of reality. My constraints in my life were very real, and more nights than one, I woke up in a cold sweat for the lives of my ancestors wasted like seeds fallen on fallow ground. My scars could never heal, I could never fully forgive than man I was married to for all he had done, and even so, we slept in the same home, and raised two children together.

            The expression he left me with as a child, that unspoken word, it remained between us like an adhesive, the unending question of what our dysfunction was. If we both functioned fine together and apart, even despite one another at times, what was the point of being together at all? I knew my answer and he his, and I suppose that was enough for the both of us, as long as we were we.

            I could feel him slowing down, getting sick and staying tired. He wouldn’t get up some days, and I would physically have to lift him. We made sure to keep the kids positive, but Taru was getting worse. His sickness was largely a mystery to me, but we knew of diseases that even the best water bending healers couldn’t cure. Toward the end, my sweet girl was accepted into a prestigious firebending academy on the main land of the fire nation. Taru told her to go, he held her hand in his and smiled at her in the sweetest way. I told him that I would travel with her but he told me that I would be safest sending her off alone.

            A fire nation ship escorted by naval guards met her and me as we waited on the pier with a handful of others. Watching her leave was one of the hardest things I had to do especially at her young age. She was sharp and astute, I think that’s why she knew what she would be missing when she left.

            When Taru passed away, I grieved for a very short time. It seemed like every moment we had together was already on borrowed time and knowing he was no longer in pain from the memory of his actions against my people was it’s own reward. His last moments were very quiet, Choshu was weeping at the foot of the bed but I was sitting with him, holding his hand in mine, humming some tuneless song. When he finally closed his dark eyes, they never opened again. Per tradition for all firebenders, he was burned at a funeral pyre.

            I carried a container of his ashes on my person at all times, and closed the bar for a while to travel. I left Yu Dao on a merchant ship to the southern islands, and my son joined me, Akane was away at school in the fire nation, having to return after coming home for the funeral. My son was dutiful and loving, just like Cho had been. He was very upset when his father died and insisted on painting an image from memory what our family looked like. It was a handsome portrait, he had real artistic skill. In the ink Taru sat, and I stood, touching his shoulder, my burned skin facing away, except for the slight sneer exposed on my flat affect. Choshu sat below us, smiling, and my daughter Akane sat proud, producing a puff of flame.

            We sailed without issue, and it felt strange to be on the ocean without Taru but as I felt the weight of his ashes at my neck, I knew that in the spirit world, he was somehow here too. That was another thing our time together brought back to me, my faith.

            When we landed in the south, we found a small merchant vessel willing to bring us back to my home, and to my surprise it still stood. But the more I thought about it, the less it shocked me. I had made the maps of the area where all these cities were unmarked; they didn’t exist for the Fire nation.

            We exited our boxy carriage and I was surprised to see Qjang’s corner store still standing, with a sign which said under new management. I entered, my son in tow, he was taken by the strangeness of this world not painted red.

 Inside, I was shocked to find a young man whom I had not seen since he had run from my arms to find his mother

“Jeng?” I asked and the man looked at me confused, he asked if he knew me and I laughed, shocked and happy.

“Maybe not, but I knew you! I last saw you when you were this tall,” I waved down on my legs, “Running away from me, to your mother. You made it, sweet child you’re alive,”

I clasped my hands over my mouth, and I saw the glimmer of recollection in his eyes.

“Miss Min?” he said, shocked. He rushed to me, and we embraced. He smelled like I used to, like earth.

“Your mother,” He sighed, staring at me, “I’m so sorry,”

My smile faltered slightly, “When did she pass?”

“Less than a season ago, she lived by us all the while, my wife is expecting our second child. We plan to name it for her. Forgive me. It’s like seeing a ghost, I can’t believe this,”

I laughed and agreed, then waved my meek son forward to meet Jeng. My son was sheepish at thirteen but opened up as Jeng showed me his beautiful family. He was married to a girl who I learned was the child of a friend. They had two rambunctious daughters and a son, and another on the way.

            He told me that my mother had left him with a good deal that they hadn’t gone through yet, and I was allowed all of it. Choshu was quick to start tearing into the neatly piled documents to inspect them. Jeng's own parents came over and we reconnected and spoke for hours as my son poured through his grandmother’s belongings. When the laughter at my adoption of Fei’s name for my subterfuge died down, and the curls of our tea smoke cooled, I retired to a room they had set up for us to stay in. My son was deep in one of the letters and showed me it.

“Choshu, it’s late, we can read them in the morning,”

“Wait, Mom, just a bit more, my uncle was so cool,

I laughed at this and asked him to explain as I let my greying hair down for bed.

“He was a commander, he was really good at appeasing forest spirits,” He looked at me, slightly perplexed, “You told me he always liked the sky, right?”

I smiled at my son’s memory and sat on the low bed, I told him he was right. Choshu nodded as he continued to read.

            “It says here, that he was never found, that he was missing, assumed dead. But Grandma wrote something in her journal, that said that he ascended instead, like he went to the spirit world because he was so one with death, right?”

I nodded, the thought of this made it hard to speak without my voice cracking, there were fat tears rolling down my cheeks. With age, I had grown much more sentimental, crying was an unavoidable consequence.

“Does that mean the Fire nation never got him?” he asked softly and I smiled as he crawled toward me, holding his candle. We were both hopelessly unable to bend it or any other element, but I held him and kissed his forehead all the same.

“No, my sweet child, that means that he was free. There was nothing left to burn.”

And with one sharp exhale, I blew out his candle.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [Roll credits](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sskFjbHu_W0)
> 
> Stay tuned for the epilogue, thanks for reading!


	16. Epilogue

_Akane was curled up in an overstuffed chair in the living room of her family home, clutching her mother’s words, which she had fallen asleep reading. Min pushed back from the writing desk with a content look upon her face and frowned at the lateness of the hour, but otherwise felt relieved. When she found her daughter, she pulled the papers from her hand and tidied the ones that had fallen to the floor and set them on a small table for her daughter to find later. She found a blanket and laid it over the girl, she was snoring very softly._

_Min looked up the stairs leading to her bed room, but instead chose to leave her house, she walked out and slipped off her house shoes in favor of her walking sandals and took up her late husband’s cane, just to hear it’s familiar crunch as she walked. They had walked the nights with each other countless times, and with his container of ashes and cane, she shut her eyes and could feel him with her._

_Though no longer a young woman, she walked without issue, even climbed, as she went to the outskirts of town and up through a bush-beaten trail she had been on countless times before. It lead, via a winding path to an over look where the Mo Ce sea_ _stretched out forever behind Yu Dao, save a few islands in the bay. In the darkness, all that was visible was a great black bite out of the earth, like if she were to walk out and meet it, she would fall off the face of the world._

_After a few minutes of silence she heard a rustle, and she turned._

_“Who’s there?” she asked the air, and though there was no response, she walked to meet the noise._

_“Hello? I can hear you, who’s out there,”_

_As she waited for a response, a pang of familiar fragrance hit her, a collection of spice and pine trees that made her remember years bygone._

_“Who is it?”_

_And to her surprise, a voice answered back._

_“An old friend, I hope,”, and from the brush, a face came to her that she never expected to see again. Tall, but bent with age, and though he was covered in rags, and even in the low light, she could make out his face, and a small, crane in his weathered old hands, folded from the wax paper of a candy._

_“Ling?” she whispered, surprised and confused, He laughed at the name and closed the gap between them._

_“I’ve not heard that name in decades, It’s so strange to hear it,”_

_“You never told me your real name, they never found you? Spirits I am so relieved,”_

_He laughed at this, and she remembered why she had had a crush on him as a girl. He offered her the crane, and she took it, their hands graced each other for a moment and she felt herself smile like a child._

_“Wait you didn’t expect me to find you? You named a Tavern after yourself and expected me of all people not to find it? And I needed to return that to you, I managed to keep it just so for so long, I think I deserve some credit”_

_They both laughed, and eventually, they embraced, after so long, after so many trials, she felt whole again._

_“I can’t stay long, but I’ll admit I didn’t expect to see you like this, I’ll come by tomorrow, I’ll even buy a beer,” He joked. She gave him an inquisitive look._

_“Why can’t you stay? It’s the middle of the night?”_

_“There are some caves at the south end of this mountain with some artifacts, It looked to be air nomad, like they were waiting there for others,”_

_“Please be careful,” She pleaded with him and he laughed._

_“That really is incredible, you sound like a mother now. I promise, I’ll be back.”_

_She watched him disappeared into the night for the second time in her life, and covered her mouth with her hand, but a thought quickly came to her._

_“Wait, what should I name your tab?”_ _Through the night air, she heard a cackle, and she rested against her cane._

_“Save it for both of us, we have a lot to talk about,”_

_Min-Yong stood alone for a long while, she felt the world around her breathing. She closed her eyes, felt the moon pulling at the ocean, felt the earth slowly crawling under her feet, felt the wind push back her graying hair. And her brother‘s sweet nature returned to her, a small crane enclosed in her bony fist._

_She knew there were volcanoes bubbling over distant coasts, and waves crashing into fine sandy beaches, she knew there were people hiding from other people who wanted them dead. She’d seen each of these worlds, touched each of these places, lived in so many different temperatures and climates; she hardly knew which was where she called home. But it was all her home, as twisted as the world had been; it was their imperfect cage. And the end of it, the escape from the cage, was always worth the wait, if only for the view from so far away._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you very much to all who read Left to Burn. It was a project of devotion and something I did to try and puzzle out a few questions left by the show. Like what was going on in the SE islands of the Earth nation? Why was the Fire nation more progressive about women? What did the Air nomad genocide look like from the other side? The real answer is "This is just a show, [I should really just relax](https://youtu.be/r31eE77b-9U?t=1m2s) ", the better answer is to write 30K words about it.
> 
> For those curious, chapters 1-4 were written back in 2012 and I eventually finished the rest in the spring of 2016. I was unsure whether or not anyone would read this because of it's esoteric appeal, but I can say I'm glad I did. It might be a little story but the feedback has been more encouraging than I can say. Thank you for reading.


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